


Thrice Defied Him - Seventh Year

by Caspian28



Series: Thrice Defied Him [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: BAMF Lily Evans Potter, Bisexual Sirius Black, F/M, Gay Remus Lupin, Indian James Potter, James Potter is a Good Friend, M/M, Marauders, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Marauders Friendship (Harry Potter), POV Lily Evans Potter, POV Remus Lupin, Remus Lupin & Lily Evans Potter Friendship, Remus Lupin Needs a Hug, Sirius Black & James Potter Friendship, Sirius Black & Lily Evans Potter Friendship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:48:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27729766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caspian28/pseuds/Caspian28
Summary: Lily Evans is lonely but determined.Remus Lupin wants to feel useful.James Potter wants to save everyone.Sirius Black would like to save his friends, damn the rest of it.Peter Pettigrew just wishes there wasn't a war in the first place, thank you very much.The Ministry is rife with turmoil, there's a Dark Lord on the loose, Dumbledore seems to be recruiting for a secret society of some sort, and the seventh year Gryffindors have their own tricks up their sleeves to confront the brewing war.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Series: Thrice Defied Him [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1895518
Comments: 14
Kudos: 37





	1. Chapter 1 - Remus

Remus Lupin was lying on his back under the big willow tree (the regular kind, not the Whomping kind) in James’ expansive yard. There was a book beside him, but he had abandoned it in favour of closing his eyes and letting the sun warm him. His head was resting on Peter’s leg – Pete was sitting up and actually reading, and he could hear James’ and Sirius’ whoops in the distance as the two raced on their new brooms.

It was the beginning of August, they had all arrived at the Potters two days ago, just after the full moon. The plan was to spend the next three weeks generally getting into mischief and trouble on the Potter’s huge property before they went back to Hogwarts for their last year.

“I can’t believe it’s only one year left,” Pete sighed, as if reading his mind. Remus cracked open his eyes slowly to look at the other boy. His body was still hurting from his last transformation, he felt achy and creaky every time he moved.

“Can’t believe we have to write NEWTs,” Remus responded. “We’re not going to have time for anything other than studying this year. Remember what OWLs were like?”

“I try not to,” Peter replied with a mock shudder. Remus tried to tamp down the anxiety he was feeling whenever he thought about school. He was excited to return, almost painfully so, but he was very aware that it was his _last year_ at Hogwarts. And no matter what Dumbledore or the other Marauders said, there was nothing left for him after graduating. He couldn’t work, not with disappearing for every full moon and _especially_ not in the current political climate – not that they were often able to hear much about the outside world while they were at Hogwarts.

“You’ll do fine,” Remus said to Pete instead of voicing anything else that was happening in his mind. “We all will.”

Pete smiled at him. “Wish I could do as well as they did without any revising,” he said, nodding to the two other boys who had landed and were clearly foot racing to the willow.

“I don’t think anyone can,” Remus sighed back. “It’s part of their obnoxious charm.”

Pete was still snickering as the other two boys stopped short in front of them. James’ hair was more all over the place than usual – if it were even possible. He had shot up again in the summer – all three other boys now dwarfed Remus in height – and he hadn’t filled out to match it yet. As if he could feel Remus looking, he ran a hand darkened by time spent in the sun through his hair as if trying to flatten it. It didn’t help. His eyes were bright and energetic as they always were, something that Remus had always envied. There were lots of things that could be said about James Potter – many of them not very nice, but no one could say that he wasn’t one of the happiest boys they had ever met.

“Hogwarts letters are here,” Sirius said in a rush as soon as he had caught his breath. Pete let out a whoop in response, and Remus shifted painfully to let the other boy jump up.

“How do you know?” he asked wryly. Pete and James had already started walking towards the house, chatting animatedly.

“We almost collided with the owls,” Sirius said sheepishly. “They sent four, which honestly seemed excessive considering they _know_ we’re all in the same place.”

Remus snickered, sitting up slowly. “Imagine if you had collided. Detention before we’re even back at school.”

“They wouldn’t give detention for that,” Sirius responded, although he looked unsure. Remus just laughed some more and extended a hand up, a silent request to be helped to his feet. Sirius reached back and hauled him up – Remus had to work not to notice how the muscles shifted in the other boy’s chest and arms as he did.

Sirius had shot up too, but unlike James had filled out over the past year as well. He’d grown out his hair, too, into lazy waves that were nearing the bottom of his ears. He was still pale – no matter how much sun Sirius got, he never tanned – and his smile was the same crooked thing that tore at Remus’ heart every time he saw it.

“You and Pete should play with us next time,” Sirius said as they made their way back to James’ house. James and Pete were just visible in the distance, nearing the back garden. Remus loved James’ house dearly, secretly wished he could explore the grounds with his friends during a full moon, but hated the large expanse when he was sore and in pain like this.

Remus gave Sirius a small smile. “Maybe next week, Pads.” He didn’t want to tell them explicitly, but the moons of the summer had been extraordinarily hard on him since his fifth year – when his friends had become animagi to roam the night with him. Having his friends around helped Remus keep his mind as a wolf – and keep from hurting himself. When he was home, though, it was just himself in a dark room, and the wolf had nothing better to do than harm Remus himself.

Sirius slipped an arm around Remus, who tried to ignore the stutter he felt in his heart. “Next week sounds excellent, Moony,” Sirius responded simply.

They trooped into the house behind James and Peter, who Mrs Potter was already gently admonishing for the amount of mud they were tracking around.

“Sorry mum,” said Sirius, smiling easily as they entered. “Hogwarts letters, though.”

Euphemia Potter turned her exasperated look on Sirius. “I’m well aware,” she said. “And you lot can open them _after_ you’ve cleaned off.”

Remus watched James and Sirius exchange an amused look before the group of four headed up the stairs to change and shower. They split off at the top of the stairs, James and Sirius to go to their rooms (which were side-by-side and connected, of course) and Remus and Pete to go to their rooms on the other side of the hall.

Once in his room, Remus stripped quickly and headed to the shower. He was jealous, sometimes, of the easy way James and Sirius had fallen into being siblings at the Potter’s house. It often made him wish he had a brother – not that he would want one under the circumstances that Sirius had come to the Potters, but it was still a nice thought. Not that he would want _Sirius_ as his brother, either…

He pushed the thought away from his mind. Some things shouldn’t be dwelled on.

Remus changed quickly once out of the shower, mostly eager to be able to open his letter. Just as he was set to head back downstairs – or possibly hover in the hall awkwardly until there was someone to go down with him – there was a knock at his door.

He pulled the door open to see Sirius on the other side. The other boy smiled easily at him. “Figured you’d be ready.”

Remus ignored the way his heart fluttered. “Didn’t think you’d be that fast,” he chose to respond instead.

“I knew you’d be done first,” Sirius said with an elegant shrug, “and that you’re still too scared of the Potters to go downstairs alone.” He dodged deftly as Remus swatted at him with the back of his hand.

They trooped downstairs together, Sirius putting a bracing arm across Remus’ shoulders without him having to ask. And if Remus leaned into the supporting embrace slightly more than he strictly needed to, well, no one else would realize.

The letters were on the Potters’ dining table. Remus could hear Mrs Potter in the kitchen, probably preparing dinner. The boys had been outside a while.

“Wonder what the new Defence professor will be like,” Remus said, mostly to break the silence. They had never had a professor stay longer than a year – no one was quite sure why, although there were rumors going around that the spot was cursed.

“Hopefully someone interesting,” Sirius responded. “I can’t do with another professor that makes the subject sound duller than Binns’ lessons.” He gave Remus a lopsided smile.

“You have to admit, that takes a certain kind of talent,” Remus quipped back. It was true – their sixth year professor had to have been the worst one yet. They had no practical lessons and had learned next to nothing that was actually interesting. Even the textbook he had chosen was dry and boring.

They boys tore into their letters at the same time. Remus noticed his envelope was rather thick, which was soon explained by the presence of a separate letter inside the first.

“What’s that, then?” Sirius asked. He had already given the contents of their letter a cursory glance over.

“Dunno,” Remus responded, fumbling as he opened the letter. He felt his chest sink as he read it.

> _Dear Mr Lupin,_
> 
> _I am certain it will not escape your notice that you have not made Head Boy this year. I would like to reassure you that we felt you were a strong candidate, but were worried by your_ condition _– Professor Dumbledore believed it would take you away from your Head duties, and I am inclined to avoid placing too much strain on you._
> 
> _Do not take this as a reflection of your character. You are an excellent student and strong leader. I have no doubt that you would have been up to the challenge and will regardless continue to act as a role model to younger prefects this year._
> 
> _Sincerely_
> 
> _Deputy Headmistress_
> 
> _Minerva McGonagall_

“What is it?” Remus heard Sirius ask, but his voice sounded as if it was coming from the other end of a long tunnel. It wasn’t as though Remus had held out hope for being Head Boy necessarily, and yet it was still painful to know that the only reason Dumbledore had felt he was incapable was because of his _condition_.

“Moony, c’mon.” He felt Sirius’ hand on his shoulder, bracingly, and the world zoomed back into focus as quickly as it had gone out of focus. Numbly, he handed Sirius the letter.

It only took the other boy a moment to read it. “This is garbage,” Sirius said, crumpling the letter in his hand. “I’ll write to her – right now if you want. This is completely unfair to you. We all thought you’d be Head Boy – you deserve it.”

“It’s fine, Pads,” Remus heard himself mumble. He tried to smile up at Sirius, but suspected it came out as more of a grimace. “This is how it it’ll be for the rest of my life, best I get used to it now.”

“This isn’t the rest of your life,” Sirius growled. “This is Hogwarts.”

The voices of James and Peter sounded in the hall, and suddenly they were standing across the table from Sirius and Remus. Remus could feel the other two boys looking at him, but couldn’t bring himself to say anything. He watched as Sirius wordlessly handed over the crumpled letter.

“They can’t do this!” Peter exclaimed, the first one to finish reading. James was still holding the letter with a sort of lost expression on his face.

“How could they _not_ make you Head Boy?” he said finally.

Remus scrubbed his face. Embarrassingly, he felt the urge to cry, which was stupid. He had _known_ he wasn’t going to make Head Boy, so why was the confirmation of this so disappointing to him?

“It’s fine,” Remus said again. “I wasn’t expecting to get it, anyways.”

“That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it,” Pete responded angrily. “Honestly, you have the best grades in our year, you work hard, you’re an excellent prefect…” He trailed off.

“I can tell my Dad,” James said after. “He’s on the board of governors, he could overrule it.”

Remus snorted slightly at that. It came out a bitter sound. “How will you explain that?” he asked James wearily. “Hey Dad, my best friend who we invited to our house for the summer is actually a werewolf, and because of that he isn’t Head Boy and we think that’s unfair.”

“Well,” James spluttered. “We have to do _something_. They can’t just treat you like this.”

He could feel Sirius behind him nodding vehemently. His hand was still on Remus’ shoulder, sending jolts of energy through his body every time the other boy moved.

“They didn’t even have to let me into Hogwarts,” Remus said. His gaze was fixed firmly on the table – he didn’t want to have to look up, see the outraged faces of his friends. “But they did. I don’t mind that I’m not Head Boy, really. It’s enough just to get to go to school. Can we please stop talking about this?”

Remus saw James and Peter exchange disbelieving looks out of the corner of his eye. Sirius squeezed his shoulder briefly before Remus felt his hand drop away, too.

“Why don’t you two open your letters, then?” Sirius said, just as James had opened his mouth – definitely to say something else about the Head Boy business. Remus looked up to shoot him a grateful smile, which Sirius returned. He felt the other boy’s hand drop from his shoulder as he moved to sit down in the chair beside him. Remus missed the warmth almost immediately.

James and Peter opened theirs at the same time. Remus had been right to think James’ had looked bigger - **imHim asdfa sdf asd** when he pulled out his letter, something else thumped on the table. He watched James pick it up, suddenly feeling even more sick to his stomach.

It was a Head Boy badge.

James had discarded the rest of his letter and was staring at the badge as if it were a poisonous beast that was likely to lunge at him at any minute. Remus watched his mouth open and close a couple times before words finally came out.

“No,” was all James said. Before anyone could say anything else, he stuffed the badge back into his now-empty envelope. “I’m sending it back. I wasn’t even a Prefect, they can’t have just gone and made me Head Boy over you.” His eyes met Remus’ across the table.

“Prongs,” Remus sighed. Every breath he took made the world feel farther and farther away. “You can’t send it back. You deserve it.”

James looked highly affronted at this. “I do _not_ ,” he gasped out. “It’s insulting. I should be spending my time _pranking_ people, not giving out detentions.”

Sirius snickered beside Remus. “Better you than me, mate.”

Something was growing in Remus’ stomach – it felt a lot like bitterness, which wasn’t a particularly welcome emotion. He did _not_ want to feel _bitter_ towards his friends over something they couldn’t even control.

“Just don’t send it back,” Remus ground out. It felt like his vision was going black around the edges, just from the effort of keeping his emotions in check. He wasn’t sure why, either – surely it was an overreaction to be _this_ upset that James had made Head Boy.

“Moony,” he heard Pete say cautiously. “Are you sure you’re okay?” At the same time, he heard James mutter something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like _send it back_.

Remus felt the bitterness grow. “Do _not_ send it back,” he hissed at James. “I swear to Merlin, Prongs, you deserve it. It’s _important_.”

“You’re more important,” James grumbled back. Remus felt some of his anger ebb away for a moment. But then –

“ _Jamie, you’re a HEAD BOY!?_ ” James’ mum entered the room with a squeal.

Remus heard himself mutter something about not feeling well and was on his feet before he even realized what he was doing. He hobbled out of the room, much more slowly than he would have liked. He vaguely heard James’ mum in the background asking about him, heard Sirius waving away her concerns before he felt a sudden presence behind him.

“C’mon Moony,” Sirius’ voice was gentle, and Remus let him put his arm around Remus’ shoulders and steer him away from the stairs, towards the back garden instead. They stopped at the back of the garden. Sirius flopped on the ground beside a rose bush, Remus following him more gingerly.

“I’m not upset,” he insisted as he lowered himself to the ground. His vision had cleared, the panicky feeling fading, and he mostly felt foolish now. Sirius’ bright brown eyes on his were not helping matters, nor was his small, knowing smile.

“You’re allowed to be upset,” Sirius said. “It’s not fair, what Dumbledore did.”

“Yes, but Prongs-” Remus began, but Sirius cut him off.

“I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve it, Moony, I swear. But you deserve it, too.” Remus glanced at Sirius out of the corner of his eye. His head was bent, black waves falling into his eyes as he pet a bumblebee perched on one of the roses.

“That’ll sting you,” Remus said by way of response.

“It won’t,” Sirius responded, his voice taking on a contrary tone. “They’re gentle. Just because they _can_ hurt people doesn’t mean they will.” Remus felt Sirius’ eyes pierce him, and he forced himself to look away.

“It doesn’t really matter,” he said finally. “This is what life will be like for me. We both know that,” he added, looking back at Sirius. “Hogwarts is more than I ever could have hoped-” he cut off, feeling, to his horror, tears burning at the edge of his vision again.

“Merlin, Rem, that doesn’t mean you can’t be disappointed.” Sirius nudged him with his foot, which Remus pointedly ignored.

“I just feel like-” Remus paused, trying to collect his words. “Dumbledore didn’t have to let me into Hogwarts. He didn’t have to do anything for me. I know it’s stupid, but I feel as though I’m throwing that all back in his face, by being upset about this.”

“Well that’s just,” Sirius paused a moment, sighed, looked at Remus carefully. “Letting you come to Hogwarts, that’s just basic human decency. You might be an X-rated dark creature, but they let in Slytherins, and that’s worse.”

Remus laughed in spite of himself. “It’ll be worse than this, when we graduate, I mean. I won’t be able to get a job – I’d have to miss work for the moon and that would make it obvious. Hogwarts is like…” he trailed off, unsure how to finish.

“A good dream that you never want to end?” Sirius finished for him. Remus smiled at the other boy.

“Exactly like that. But it’s my reality, Pads, I have to start facing it sooner or later.”

Sirius made a face in response. “Working is overrated anyways,” he said finally. “You can just move in with me and Jamie here. Pete can come, too. It’ll be exactly like Hogwarts.”

Remus tried to ignore the warmth that had settled in his stomach at that. _You can just move in with me_. If only he could.

Both boys jumped as a shout made it’s way across the garden. “Boys, dinner time!”

They trooped inside, Sirius with his arm around Remus again. He knew it was only for support – all the Marauders were constantly hovering in the days after a full moon, helping Remus move around. This was no different – except that, well, it was _Sirius_.

Dinner was a quick affair. Despite James’ best attempts, his parents continued to draw him into conversation about his becoming head boy. Remus weathered this with a smile, even if he was still slightly upset. He owed it to James, at least, to be proud of him. He could feel Sirius’ worried eyes on him all meal, and didn’t miss how Pete constantly changed the conversation any time the upcoming school year came up. Mostly, he was grateful for his friends.

After dinner, Remus attempted to escape to his room, claiming exhaustion. The Potters let him go without too much of a fuss. They didn’t know about his _furry little problem_ , of course, but believed he was simply sickly, which was fine by Remus. Naturally, though, the other Marauders were not about to let him off that easily.

James was the first to appear in his room that night, flopping down onto his bed without preamble. Peter followed next with Sirius in tow, all of them piling together under the covers. His bed at the Potters, at least, was bigger than their four posters at Hogwarts, which the four boys no longer fit into all together.

“I’m not going to step down from being Head Boy,” James said that night. “Although I still think you deserve it, Rem.”

Remus shrugged lightly, more relaxed now than he had been earlier. “It’s fine by me, honestly,” he said. “Means you’re responsible for keeping everyone out of trouble now, not me.” He gave James a wicked grin. James groaned in response.

“I don’t know if I can do it, lads. Stay out of trouble a whole year?” he gasped dramatically and pretended to faint.

“I’m sure they don’t expect you to stay out of trouble the _whole_ year,” Peter teased. “We should set a precedent, show them you’re still a Marauder first.”

“I like how you think, Wormtail,” James responded with a decidedly wicked grin.

And just like that, everything was how it always was. The four boys sat up late into the night, planning a Welcome Feast prank the likes of which the school had never seen before. Remus was the last to fall asleep, as usual, squished between Peter and Sirius in the bed, with James on Sirius’ other side. He was happy, but it was a melancholy sort of happy. He couldn’t help but feel that everything and nothing had changed all at once.


	2. Chapter 2 - Lily

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have no note other than to say i hope you love my marauders as much as i do, because i love them so much ugh

“Marlene, hurry up or we’ll miss it!” Lily called through the halls of her best friend’s house. It was the middle of August, and they were due for a meeting at Potter’s house, of all places, to put plans into motion for their Hogwarts information network.

She had discussed it on the train with James, of course, but had still been shocked when he had written in early July to see how she was doing and to start planning. They had conversed all summer thus far, and finally a group of students were to meet at James’ house for three days to finalize everything. This group included Lily and Marlene of course – that is, if Marlene would hurry up.

“I’m here, it’s fine,” her best friend said breathlessly, appearing around the corner. “Nearly forgot my wand. We have plenty of time anyways, you’re just worried about being late to your _boyfriend’s_ house.”

Lily momentarily let go of the portkey sitting on Marlene’s kitchen table to swat at her friend. “He’s not my boyfriend, honestly Marlene,” she groused.

She wasn’t lying, either. She _had_ kissed him on the Hogwarts Express on the way home. They had written back and forth all summer. But they hadn’t talked about it, not really. She wasn’t sure if it was that he didn’t want to, or because she kept putting it off. She had been consumed this summer by grief over her parents death. There was a brief stay at Petunia’s, where she had felt less than welcome, followed by the funeral, and then just like that, she was at Marlene’s house.

“He’s not _not_ your boyfriend, either,” Marlene said with an impish grin. Lily couldn’t reach out to swat at her again, the countdown had ended and she felt the pull of the portkey behind her navel.

They spun into existence in an intricate garden, presumably behind the Potter house. They had left London raining and gloomy, but here the sun shone brightly. Marlene landed with a graceful ease, but Lily barely managed to keep her feet as they touched down, stumbling awkwardly.

She felt a hand on her shoulder, steadying her and looked up into the face of Sirius Black. “Alright, Evans?” he asked with a bright grin. She felt herself smile back.

“Why can’t wizards have a single form of instantaneous travel that isn’t horrendous?” she said by way of greeting. Then she was lost in a whirlwind of greetings and _missed you’s_ exchanged between the boys and herself and Marlene, before, naturally, she found herself face-to-face with James Potter.

The garden was quiet, suddenly. She turned to see the rest of the group trailing inside the house, but didn’t miss the smirk that Peter sent James’ way. Suddenly, she felt uncomfortable – not in a bad way, just in a _the last time I saw you we kissed and we haven’t talked about it at all_ kind of way. James ran his hand through his hair, and she imagined – perhaps too hopefully – that he was feeling the same.

Before she knew what was happening, really, he had pulled her into his arms. She wasn’t one for hugging, normally, and neither was Marlene, really. Lily hadn’t realized just how much she _needed_ a hug until this exact moment. She felt herself relax slightly in James’ arms. He had grown over the summer, he was now a head taller than her at least.

“How are you?” he asked into her hair. To her horror, she felt tears prick at her eyes.

“Surviving,” she answered after a moment, hoping it didn’t come out too watery or weak. She pulled away from him a little bit. “How’s your summer?”

“It’s been-” he paused, as if mulling something over. “I’m Head Boy,” he said suddenly.

Lily’s heart skipped a beat. “You’re _what_?”

“Don’t make a big deal of it,” he said, though it came out in a rush. He stepped farther back from her to run a hand through his hair. “I wanted to tell you in person – but before everyone-”

“You weren’t even a prefect!” Lily cut him off. She took a deep breath, then, as the look on his face entered territory that she would describe almost as hurt. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m just surprised is all. I thought it would be Rem. I did make Head Girl,” she added, as an afterthought. “So I guess it’s you and me this year.” Lily did her best to give him a warm smile, although she was still reeling a little bit.

“Yeah,” he gave her a weak smile back. “It’s just, Remus is trying to act like he’s not upset, but we know he is. He got this letter from McGonagall…”

Lily listened as he filled her in on how they had found out and on Remus’ reaction, a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. It wasn’t that Potter had been made Head Boy, she wasn’t upset about that at all, to her surprise – although she was shocked. But she was angry for Remus, and hurt for him, too. If James’ hadn’t made it clear that she wasn’t to bring it up or react strongly to the news, she would be marching up to Hogwarts right now and demanding Dumbledore answer for himself.

“I won’t bring it up, even,” she said once he finished talking. “At least he’s still a prefect. But Merlin,” she ran an aggravated hand through her hair, blushing when she realized this was _definitely_ a habit she had picked up from James. She dropped her hand quickly. “Not giving the spot to the most qualified person in our year – no offense – just because he’s a _werewolf_.”

She sighed. James was giving her a funny look, he looked almost wistful, but that wasn’t quite it. “I missed you, Evans,” he said when she asked if he was alright. “Let’s go in, Mary was supposed to floo here a few minutes ago, she’s probably inside.”

“Alright.” She did her best to give him an easy smile. He lead her through a path in the garden that opened up to what must be a back door of the house. She hadn’t had the time to look before, really, but his house was _huge_. Nothing like the small bungalow she had grown up in with her parents and Petunia.

He held the glass door for her when they reached it, so she stepped inside ahead of him. The back door opened up into a huge dining room. The table seemed almost excessively large for a family of four – really a family of three, before Sirius. The Marauders were already gathered around one end of it with Marlene, Mary and some other faces Lily didn’t recognize. An older witch and wizard stood over them – they were James’ parents, she realized.

She felt James come up beside her, their arms brushing lightly as they stepped further into the room. Just beyond, she could see a kitchen that looked remarkably modern compared to what she expected from most pure-blooded wizards. Not even Severus, who was half-blood, had such a modern kitchen – although, she realized, that could just because he was poor.

“You must be Lily,” the older witch said to her warmly. “I’m James’ and Sirius’ mum, you can call me Euphemia, if you’d like.”

Lily was slightly shocked that she had introduced herself as Sirius’ mum, too, but did her best to hide it, smiling politely instead. The woman gestured to her husband, who was clearly engrossed in conversation with Sirius. “That’s my husband, Fleamont.”

“Thanks, mum,” James cut in. Lily saw him run a hand through his hair out of the corner of her eye. “We’ll just…” He trailed off, instead putting a hand on Lily’s back and guiding her towards the table.

In a few moments, the whole group was seated around half of the table. James’ parents – Fleamont and Euphemia – had disappeared. Lily found herself seated beside Remus on one side, who gave her a quick hug as she sat down, and Marlene on the other. James was standing at the head of the table with another boy Lily didn’t recognize, though he looked to be older than the rest of them.

“Erm-” James began. She heard Sirius, on the other side of Remus, mutter something that sounded a lot like _eloquent_ , but he fell quiet when Remus elbowed him in the ribs. “So I know we had initially planned to meet with just a few of us returning to Hogwarts, but Remus mentioned it might be smart for everyone who’s going to be involved to meet each other. This isn’t everyone,” he ruffled his hair and Lily had to fight back a smile. For once, James Potter was uncomfortable being the centre of attention. “But it’s everyone who could come. Ah-”

This time, Lily felt Remus elbow her instead of Sirius, though she had said nothing. “Please rescue him,” Remus muttered to her. “I can’t keep listening to this.”

“We’re worried about the amount of news that is getting into Hogwarts,” Lily said after taking a deep breath. Mary gave her an encouraging smile from across the table. “Last year Mary and I sent some owls to other muggleborns who had graduated. We had thought the Daily Prophet wasn’t really reporting what was happening in Britain – or not the big things at least. And we were right.”

James motioned to her, so after a steady breath she stood up and walked to the head of the table to stand beside him and the other boy – someone she vaguely recognized, but couldn’t quite place the face of.

“The Ministry doesn’t want to panic the public, so they’ve banned the Daily Prophet from reporting anything they feel is too frightening. It means that so many people don’t know,” she felt herself blush as her voice broke a little bit, but forced herself to keep going. “So many people don’t know what’s been happening – the attacks on muggles, especially the families of muggleborn witches and wizards, reforms that are getting pushed through the ministry, there’s a lot of fear and panic.

“We started communicating regularly with other muggleborns and half-bloods who were no longer at Hogwarts so they could keep us updated. We have a fairly large group now – people who work in the Ministry, in Diagon, who live in muggle communities – who have been keeping an ear out for news like this.” She paused, surveying all the faces in front of her. Everyone was listening with rapt attention, both people she knew and people she hadn’t seen before. Marlene shot her a discreet “thumbs up”.

“James and I thought that we should make it official this year. Start our own proper news source, at least in Hogwarts, that will keep everyone updated. It will take everyone here to help, all the Hogwarts students to write articles and distribute them, and all the graduates to keep giving us information. I think, maybe, the more we know, the less there is to fear – and the more we can do about it.”

Lily trailed off, feeling almost uncertain. Everyone was listening, but she didn’t feel like her words were making enough _sense_. She chanced a sideways look at James, who caught her eye with a small smile.

“We’ll need to do lots of planning,” he said, then. “But maybe we should introduce ourselves first?” There were nods around the table. “Um – I’m James Potter, you all know me, at least sort of, I think,” he trailed off. “I’m in Gryffindor, seventh year, and I’m Head Boy.”

Lily watched Remus’ face carefully as James said this, but he only bent his head and snickered at something Sirius had said. She felt James nudge her and realized that everyone else was waiting for her to continue. Her face heated.

“I’m Lily Evans, I’m also in seventh year Gryffindor, and I’m the Head Girl this year.” Much to Lily’s chagrin, Marlene wolf-whistled at this announcement.

“I’m Benjy,” the other boy who was standing with them said finally. “Benjy Fenwick. I’m a half-blood, and I was a Ravenclaw when I was in school. I graduated two years ago,” he smiled around at the table. “I work in the Department of International Magical Cooperation at the Ministry, so I hear a lot.” It finally clicked in Lily’s mind – she hadn’t met Benjy, of course, but had communicated in writing with him frequently over the past year.

They went around the table then, everyone introducing themselves. There were the people Lily knew well – Remus, Sirius, Peter, Marlene, Mary, Alice, Frank – who had graduated the previous year and had just begun training as an Auror – but they weren’t the only ones from Hogwarts. It seemed James knew plenty of people and had not hesitated to extend his reach for their meeting. There was Mariah Wratburn, a sixth year Ravenclaw prefect (who also played Quidditch, which must be how James knew her), Ellie and Ed Siuod, twin Hufflepuff seventh years (and beaters for their house teams), and Phillip Castillo, a seventh year Ravenclaw who didn’t volunteer much information about himself at all, but James whispered to her that he was a distant relation. There were also the Hogwarts graduates, whose names she recognized from correspondences the previous year. Benjy and Frank were two, as well as Zander Warrren (who worked in the Department of Mysteries), Ethan Boyle (an assistant shopkeep at the pet emporium in Hosgmeade), and Mara Henry, who had graduated from Hufflepuff the previous year and now worked in Gringotts.

The rest of the meeting passed in a blur, full of plans for communication chains, regular meetings during the school year, and snacks courtesy of James’ parents. Lily felt overwhelmed by the end of it. She had always considered herself an outgoing person, but spending hours in a new environment with sixteen other people was pushing it, even for her. By the time everyone had left, except the Marauders and Lily, Mary, and Marlene, who were staying for another couple days to iron out the planning, Lily had slumped against the table, her head pounding.

“Not out of energy already, Evans?” Lily tilted her head to see Sirius standing over her, giving her an amused look.

“Not all of us thrive off attention, Black,” she responded. It came out slightly more sharply than she intended, but he laughed anyways.

“We’re going to eat outside and play a pickup quidditch game, are you coming?” Sirius asked. She nodded and stood up to follow him out, Marlene and Mary appearing at her side as they went.

“You were _great_ , Lils,” Mary gushed. “You’re going to be such a good Head Girl.”

“It’s such a fantastic idea,” Marlene put in before Lily could respond. “I know we’re still just in school, but it feels like we’re really _doing something_ , you know?”

“Yeah,” Lily smiled at her two best friends. “I hope it’s enough. I keep feeling as though it’s not – like it won’t even change anything.”

Marlene slung an arm around Lily’s shoulders. “Anything is better than nothing, Lils,” she said gently. Lily did her best to give her friends a believable smile.

The truth was, as important as it was for real information to be passed around Hogwarts, she was still concerned. What if it just created a climate of more fear? What if it sparked fights with some of the more unfriendly students?

“Try not to worry so much,” Mary said, catching the expression on Lily’s face. “We’re doing a good thing here, Lils.”

When the three girls arrived at the field, James was already distributing brooms to everyone. He divided teams quickly, too, based on player skill to make it as even as possible. Sirius, Lily, Peter, and Mary made up one team, with James, Marlene, and Remus on the other. Despite having more players, Lily’s team was decidedly walloped.

They ate dinner under the setting sun, then, brought out to them by Euphemia along with an engorgio-ed picnic blanket. Lily found herself sat quite comfortably between Marlene and James, although she was aware of every inch of space between herself and James like she had never been before.

“I don’t know why we didn’t spend our whole break here,” Marlene said through a mouthful of her sandwich. “This is way better than my place.”

Lily smiled at her. “You’re just upset you don’t have a full size quidditch pitch at yours,” she teased.

“Well, yeah,” scoffed Marlene. “Wouldn’t you be if you were me?” She leaned across Lily towards James. “Oi, Potter, looking for another wayward Gryffindor to adopt? Because I’d love to make better use of this quidditch pitch.”

The whole group laughed. “Honestly,” said Mary, “the only thing you care about is quidditch, Marls.”

Marlene gave her a _well, obviously_ kind of look that made Lily snort.

“No one else is allowed to move in,” Sirius said definitively. “Someone would usurp my place as favourite Potter child, and I absolutely will not stand for that.”

“If you’re the favourite Potter child, what am I?” James asked indignantly. Sirius gave him a look that screamed mischief.

“You’re the one they _have_ to keep around.” Everyone collapsed in giggles at James’ affronted look. Soon, the two were wrestling, and it only took them a few moments to drag Remus and Peter into the scuffle as well.

***

Much later that evening, Lily, Marlene, and Mary were all curled up on Lily’s bed at the Potters. They had given the girls an _entire_ wing of the house, each with their own room and bathroom. Lily felt a little bit lost, she had spent the whole summer sharing a room with Marlene, and the strange amount of space she had here immediately felt suffocating, but her friends had sought her out almost immediately.

“So,” Marlene began, turning on her side to face Lily. “What happened with Potter this morning?”

Lily felt herself blush almost immediately. “Why aren’t you asking Mary about what she was up to with Peter this afternoon?” she complained. “Why are you picking on _me_?”

“Because I’m boring,” Mary said from Lily’s other side.

“It’s true,” Marlene agreed solemnly. “We all know what she’s _up to_ with Pettigrew by now-” she broke off with a shriek as Mary hit her with a pillow. “Am I _wrong_?”

“Not really,” Mary said with a sigh. Marlene turned away from Mary to look back at Lily. She raised a questioning eyebrow.

“You’re relentless,” Lily said with a sigh. “Nothing happened,” she added, when Marlene nudged her none-too-gently. Both girls were still looking at her expectantly. “Seriously, nothing. He hugged me, that’s it.”

“That’s all,” Lily said firmly. “He hugged me and we talked.”

“You’re so boring,” Marlene said, flopping onto her back. “You two need to snog.”

“ _Marlene_ ,” Lily groaned. She covered her head with her blankets, pretending to sleep. They talked well into the night, until words trailed off into deep breaths and Lily fell asleep more peacefully than she had in months.

***

The next two days passed in a whirlwind of planning and quidditch games. Lily, Remus, and Sirius were tasked with the more complex spellwork that was needed for their project, affectionately dubbed _Operation Daily Prophet_. This meant, of course, that while everyone else was in James’ sitting room, the group of three was hunched over the table instead, surrounded by parchment and books.

Sirius had clearly already reached his capacity for actually reading and was, much to Lily’s annoyance, casting charms at all their books that made the words fly off the page an quite literally go in one ear and out the other. The feeling was more than unpleasant.

“Black, if you’re not going to help, why are you here?” Lily finally growled in annoyance.

“I am going to help!” he protested. He gave her a lopsided grin. “Just not with the _reading_ part.”

“It feels rather useless, anyways,” Remus said, then. “I can’t find a single spell that would do what we want it to do. We could make a spell of our own, but that seems rather time-consuming and prone to error.”

“I think we need to change the plan,” Lily said with a sigh. She pushed some hair out of her face – it was getting long again, she kept forgetting to ask Marlene’s mum to trim it.

They had decided, initially, to create a newspaper-style publication that would appear in each students dorm once per month with recent news. It would have a fail-safe trigger word to wipe its contents of visible information when the owner was not reading it. However, the theory – which Remus and Sirius both seemed to know a suspicious amount of already – wasn’t designed for such a large-scale project.

The issue they were currently facing was in the spell required to get a copy to the dormitories of each student that wanted one, but without sending anything to students that _didn’t_.

“Here’s what I think,” Sirius said, finally. “I think you’re both overthinking this.”

He hoisted himself onto the table, now sitting between but well above both Remus and Lily. Lily had to crane her neck to look at him. “Are you going to enlighten us, Black?” she asked after far too many moments of pregnant silence.

“If I must,” he responded cheekily. Remus punched him on the leg – the only part of Sirius he could really reach. “ _Ow_ , Moony. Anyways, I think at the start of the year we should just give everyone one. Make one appear on everyone’s beds, whatever, really.”

“But aren’t there students we don’t want seeing them? Slytherins and the like?” Remus asked, voicing Lily’s silent thoughts.

“If you really think about it,” Sirius said, “all we’re doing is sharing news.” He grinned down at Remus and Lily. “I say we find a way to continue adding pages to whatever we send, maybe something like a book. It doesn’t matter if the Slytherins see it. What are they going to do?”

Sirius combed through his hair quickly before sticking his nose up in the air, clearly trying to imitate a Slytherin student. “Oh Professor,” he said in a mock-posh accent, “some students are reporting _news_ , and I – a slimey, greasey, snakey git – dislike hearing the truth. I demand it be banned.”

Lily laughed in spite of herself – although guilt tickled the back of her mind with the knowledge that Sirius was clearly trying to make fun of one Slytherin in particular. Remus clearly had more self-control, she saw him roll his eyes at Black, but that was all. She nudged him. “Come on, it was a little funny.”

Remus grinned back at her. “I’m not saying it wasn’t, only that I try to avoid stroking his ego wherever possible.”

Sirius prentended to faint, dramatically swooning and collapsing across the table, which only made Lily giggle harder.

“Moony, you cruel, cruel soul,” he moaned. “You wound me.”

“Seriously,” Lily said, once she had controlled herself again. Remus was watching them with a mixture of bemusement and fondness on his face. “How would we do that?”

Sirius sat up. “We make something like a book, or a magazine. Just one throughout the year. And then-”

Remus cut in, interrupting him excitedly. “We have an original, like a master copy. Any time we change it, it changes all the other copies. That’s how we add new stories!” His eyes glinted excitedly, and Lily wondered, not for the first time, if Remus wasn’t really the mastermind behind all the Marauders pranks.

“I didn’t have it thought out that far,” Sirius admitted, looking begrudgingly impressed. “I was just going to say that we find a way to make them all change at the same time. That’s why you’re the brains, Moony.”

Lily saw Remus blush. It was strange, after all this time simple compliments still made him blush like he was an eleven year old werewolf scared of everything.

With their new plan in place, they returned to their books in earnest – except Sirius, who lay down on the table until Euphemia shouted at him from the other room to get off. Lily wasn’t sure she could call herself happy, not completely – not without her parents – but at that moment, she had the most purpose that she had had all summer, and it felt _good_.


	3. Chapter 3 - Remus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to do my best to post chapters once a week on Mondays, but I also make zero (0) promises because time is fake and I don't know how to keep track of it....

Remus woke to the feeling of something slimy on his face. He groaned. He had woken up the same way almost every morning since they had arrived at James and it was starting to get old. When he didn’t immediately get up, the blankets were ripped none too gently from his body.

“Merlin, Pads,” he groused. “Just because you can turn into a dog doesn’t mean you should do it at every opportunity.”

He opened his eyes to see the black muzzle of his best friend’s dog form. A stream of drool was dangling from his tongue, threatening to drop at any moment and land in Remus’ eye. Remus whacked him on the side.

“Turn back, you beast, you’re slobbering all over me,” he groaned. Padfoot jumped off the bed, turning back into his friend as soon as his feet touched the floor. Remus pulled his blankets back up and over his head.

“Suit yourself,” Sirius’ muffled voice said, “but in five minutes James is coming in here to check on you, and you _know_ his wake-ups are worse.”

Remus flipped the blanket back off his head with a sigh. “Don’t you lot know how to sleep in?”

Sirius sat down on the end of Remus’ bed, looking self-satisfied. He was already dressed in a combination of muggle and wizarding clothing – light blue jeans and a dark green button up shirt with a flared collar. He had a light set of black robes on over top. That was when Remus remembered – they were going to Diagon Alley for their school things today.

“Diagon Alley,” he squeaked, jumping out of bed. “Why didn’t you wake me sooner?”

He knew Sirius was laughing at him, but ignored the other boy in favour of pulling out some clothes.

“So _now_ you want to get up?” Sirius stretched out in Remus’ place on the bed. Remus rolled his eyes and didn’t bother responding. Once he had gathered his things he ducked into the bathroom for a quick shower, hearing Sirius snickering behind him.

When he emerged Sirius was nowhere in sight, so he made his way downstairs to the Potter’s dining room, following the sound of excited voices. Mr Potter – _Fleamont,_ Remus had to keep reminding himself, although if he had a name quite like that he’d much prefer to be called by his surname, really – was piling pancakes onto plates for each of the boys. Remus felt his stomach give a small flip. It was getting close the moon again, and recently his body had begun rebelling at the thought of eating any food but meat. He hated it, though, so he put a smile on his face and sat down next to Sirius at the table.

Thankfully, Fleamont had also made sausages and bacon, which he divided up between the boys. Sirius must have seen his facial expression, too, because when everyone else was focused on their food, he pulled a couple pancakes off of Remus’ plate and replaced them with more meat. Remus felt his stomach settle.

“What’s the plan for you boys today?” Euphemia asked as they ate. James, on the other side of the table, was almost vibrating with excitement. He was also shoving food down his throat at an alarming rate, and choked when he tried to answer. Peter thumped him on the back.

“School supplies first,” Sirius answered instead of James. “Then Gambol and Japes.”

“Then Quality Quidditch Supplies,” James finally spluttered out around his food. Remus grinned in spite of himself. The excited energy was infectious, even if he was tired.

“I’m meeting Mary for lunch, after that,” Peter put in. Remus cast a smirk his way. Peter and Mary had been simply disgusting for the three days the girls had been at the Potter’s house. They got along far too well, in Remus’ opinion. Mary was like a female Wormtail.

James mumbled something that Remus didn’t catch, but it had made his mum squeal. “It’s nothing mum,” Remus tuned in to hear James grumble. “Just lunch. As _friends_.”

“Does she know that?” Sirius asked teasingly. James jumped, and Remus was pretty sure Sirius had kicked him under the table. He turned to Remus, then, who tried to ignore the flush he felt when Sirius focused his gaze on him. “Guess that leaves you and me for lunch, Moony.”

“Only if we can go to Flourish and Blotts after,” Remus responded, hoping his face wasn’t turning red at the thought of him and Sirius, alone together, _like on a date_ , his mind supplied helpfully.

“You bore me, Moony,” Sirius complained. “If we can go to Quality Quidditch Supplies after, though, then I’m all yours.” He waggled his eyebrows at Remus, who felt himself _definitely_ flush this time.

“Whatever you want, Pads,” he said with a sigh.

The boys cleared the table for the Potters – the thing that had shocked Remus the most over the years, and Sirius, too, was that the Potters didn’t have a house elf. Almost all rich, pure-blooded families did. When he asked James, the other boy had just shrugged and said that his mother preferred to do the cleaning herself, and his father was an excellent cook thanks to his background in potions, so why would they need one?

They all crowded around the hearth of the fireplace with Mr Potter, who was coming with them. He took some floo powder off of the shelf.

“Do you boys have your mirrors?” he asked, looking between Sirius and James. It was strange, sometimes, how similar he and James looked – Fleamont was like an older copy of James, from his skin tone, to his slight build, to his hair – although James had the same bright smile and dimples as his mother. What was uncanny, though, was how much Sirius looked like the Potters despite not being related, Remus thought. It had been untrue when they were younger, of course, but since Sirius had moved in with the Potters he seemed to take on their relaxed, excited energy – the way they all carried themselves, their lopsided smiles, their bright eyes. Remus just wished he knew why it was so _frightfully_ attractive in Sirius, but not in James.

He was broken from his reverie, having missed the response of Sirius and James, by Peter. “Remus needs robes!” he exclaimed, stopping the whole party in their tracks.

Remus looked down at himself – he had pulled on some jeans and a t-shirt without really thinking about what he was wearing. Now that he was paying attention, though, he realized that everyone else _was_ wearing robes over their muggle clothing.

“Why?” Remus enquired, confused. He had never worn robes to Diagon before. He always preferred muggle clothing, it was what he had grown up wearing, and robes were too _hot_ in the summer.

He saw the elder Potters exchange looks, didn’t understand what they meant. Was it because he was going with the Potters – did they not want to be seen with people who looked like muggles? But that couldn’t be it, the Potters weren’t like that. Plus, Remus had met up with them in Diagon before, and they had never cared then.

After a moment of tense silence, Sirius sighed. “C’mon, Moony.” Remus let Sirius take him by the hand and lead him out of the sitting room, back towards the stairs that led to their rooms at the Potters.

“What’s wrong?” Remus asked when they were out of earshot. Instead of answering, Sirius tightened his grip on Remus’ hand for a moment, before abruptly releasing it. “Pads?” Remus prompted.

“It’s not…” Sirius began. “It’s not anything to do with you, or the Potters, or what you wear, really.” They entered Remus’ room and Sirius went to the wardrobe, pulling out a set of robes for Remus. He tossed them on the bed. “Hold on,” Sirius said, before leaving the room.

He returned a moment later, holding a light brown shirt with a flared collar, similar to what Sirius was already wearing.

“This will be big on you,” he said, passing the shirt to Remus, too, “but I think I know enough tailoring spells to make it fit better.”

“Okay,” Remus said, still uncertain and definitely confused. He sat down on the bed next to his robes and pulled his shirt off. “I still don’t understand why?”

Just then, James and Peter poked their heads through the door. “Good choice,” James said when his eyes landed on the shirt that Remus was buttoning up.

“We figured we should check on you two,” Peter added. “Sorry for pointing it out, Rem. It’s not a good time to be in Diagon – or anywhere wizarding, dressed like a muggle.”

“Why?” Remus asked, more confused than ever by Peter’s explanation. Sirius raised his wand in front of Remus, head bent as he worked to shorten the length of the sleeves and width of the collar. The shirt moving around on Remus tickled, and he fought the urge to squirm.

“Okay,” James said after exchanging a shrouded look with Peter. Remus was confused, felt almost like he wanted to cry. What was he doing wrong? Why was everyone acting like this?

“It has nothing to do with you, Moony, promise,” James said in a rush, clearly noticing the look on Remus’ face. Not for the first time, Remus wished he could shroud his emotions better. “It’s just…” he trailed off for a moment, a thoughtful look on his face. Remus could feel his anxiety increase with every moment James was silent. Finally, the other boy came over to sit down on the bed beside Remus and slung an arm around him.

“It’s been bad this summer, in the wizarding world,” he said, finally. “It’s not so bad, here in Godric’s Hollow – we’ve been left well enough alone because it’s a magical and muggle community – and because the Potters are a big, international pureblood family. No one wants to challenge us, really. But…”

Sirius and Peter had come to sit down with him, too. Remus was more apprehensive than ever – why were his friends already up and prepared to comfort him. Why was he so oblivious to what was going on in the wizarding world?

“There’s a lot of…” James tried again, but trailed off, clearly searching for the right words. “There’s a lot of anti-muggle sentiment. And anything to do with muggles – including half-bloods and muggleborns. It’s safer to just…not dress like muggles, or reveal your blood status, or talk about muggle culture when you’re in the wizarding public right now. Hogwarts will be different, though.”

“Okay,” Remus said cautiously. “So I shouldn’t wear muggle clothes, I get it now. But why are you all looking at me like I’m about to panic?”

James ran the hand that wasn’t around Remus’ arms through his hair, a telltale sign of agitation to anyone who knew him well. He felt Sirius lean into him, and Peter shifted uncomfortably on Sirius’ other side.

“Just tell me, please,” Remus breathed. He had begun to have an idea of what it would be. Because of course, it was what it always boiled down to, for him.

“There’s a lot of…anti half-breed panic,” James said the last words so quickly Remus could hardly pick them out.

“You mean anti half-blood?” Remus asked, knowing that wasn’t it, knowing that it wasn’t what James had meant at all. Sirius’ hand was on his knee, now, squeezing a gentle, comforting pressure that was grounding him.

“Moony…” Peter began, “We don’t think anything of it, obviously. And it’s not like anyone can tell, just from looking at you out in Diagon Alley.”

“But it’s better if you don’t draw attention to yourself,” Sirius added. “But that’s easy enough. A nice shirt and some robes and now you’re the most dashing wizard to have ever walked the streets of Diagon.” He smiled blindingly down at Remus, who felt the knot in his chest loosening at Sirius’ complement. James squeezed his shoulders before letting his arm drop.

“We didn’t want to scare you,” James said, finally. “It’s just..you might see things or hear things in Diagon that will make you – _all_ of us react – and it’s better to at least look the part of a pure-blood wizard when that happens, you know?”

“Yeah,” Remus said, taking a steadying breath. James and Peter stood up, but Sirius was still beside him, hand on his knee. “We’ll be alright, though, right?”

“We’ll be fine,” Pete said with a reassuring smile. “You have us with you, after all.”

“Plus we have the mirrors,” James added. Remus gave him a questioning look.

“The ones Prongs and I use at school, for pranks?” Sirius said to Remus. Remus nodded in acknowledgement. The mirrors had allowed them to avoid so much trouble over the years. “Dad has a third one,” Sirius continued. “So James will have one and I’ll have one in Diagon, and if anything happens we can just call for him and tell him where we are.”

“That’s a good idea,” Remus said. He stood up, letting Sirius’ hand fall off his knee, sure he was just imagining Padfoot’s look of disappointment. “Now come on, we’ve wasted enough time.”

The four boys all grinned, dashing out of the room and back to the fire place, eager to be in Diagon.

Remus ended up stepping through the floo last. He always hated the spinning sensation – it made him feel weak and sick. Peter caught him when he stumbled out of the other end of the floo in the Leaky Cauldron and kept an arm around him for support as they made their way outside. The boys stood by, chattering animatedly while Mr Potter tapped the bricks on the wall with his wand. Remus watched curiously as the wall shifted open to reveal the alley behind it – he wondered what kind of spell made the wall do that.

Then they were in Diagon. The sights and smells assaulted Remus all at once, and he leaned more heavily on Peter for a moment. He saw James and Sirius each cast a quick look back at them, but the two were vibrating with excitement already and eager to get moving. Remus did his best to give them a quick, reassuring smile. He extracted himself from Peter’s arm as he recovered from the assault on his senses, too. He wasn’t feeling his complete best but was also determined to make sure his friends weren’t worrying over him the whole time.

“Right,” said Mr Potter, halting them all under an umbrella outside of Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream. The cobblestone was rough underfoot here, Remus could feel it even through his trainers. “We’ll do school items all together, then you lads can split up and do what you’d like for the afternoon.” The boys all grinned at each other. “Do you have your lists?”

Remus watched in amusement as James looked to Sirius, who looked to Peter, who looked back at James. Of course none of the three had brought their actual school lists – there was a reason Remus was the most organized of the lot.

“I have it,” he said, once he felt like the silence had gone on long enough. “Only a couple new books and some potions ingredients, really.”

“Let me see,” Sirius snatched it out of his hands. “We need _two_ new books for Defence – I wonder who this new bloke is who’s teaching us.”

“You can’t call your new professor a bloke, Sirius,” Mr Potter said with a sigh.

Sirius grinned blindingly at him. “Sorry, Da’.” Remus felt jealousy stir in his stomach at the fond look Mr Potter cast on Sirius. It wasn’t that his own dad didn’t look at him like that – Remus loved his parents dearly, after all – but it was always tainted by what Remus was. Clearly, Mr Potter didn’t care what Sirius was or what his past had been, he loved him as his child all the same, despite everything.

James snatched the list from Sirius, then. “Charms, Transfiguration, History of Magic, Herbology all have the same books as last year. New ones for Runes and Arithmancy – Merlin, Moony I forgot you took such boring subjects.”

Remus rolled his eyes at James. They had begun walking in the direction of Flourish and Blotts before Sirius realized that Remus didn’t have the book list for _all_ the classes, just the ones he was taking, and the rest of the boys didn’t know what they needed for Muggle Studies. Remus did his best to tune them out, taking in the sights around him instead.

The cobblestone on the road was worn down, probably from centuries of feet passing through. Shops lined each side of the street, bustling with activity – it was the week before term, when most Hogwarts students did their school shopping. Street vendors were parked down the middle of the laneway, selling everything from ice lollies that changed flavour every time you licked to alleged dragon heartstring (though Remus doubted the reliability of the latter, especially considering it was apparently selling for two Galleons).

There was the burnt smell of magic in the air – though Remus doubted anyone could smell it except him – it was the wolf that had a heightened sensitivity to smell, after all. It mingled with the smells of food and cologne, blood and sweat. Remus was finding it overwhelming.

“Are you okay?” Remus jumped at the hand on his shoulder. It was Peter, of course, who had been walking next to him the whole time. Remus did his best to pretend to himself that he wasn’t disappointed it was Peter taking notice of him, and not… _someone else_.

“Yeah,” Remus said, giving him a wane smile. “There’s just…a lot.” He gestured vaguely to the world around them. “It’s so close to… _that_ time for me that everything is just stronger. It’s hard to describe.”

Pete squeezed his shoulder. “We’re almost at Flourish and Blotts. Will it be better when we’re inside?”

“Probably,” Remus said. “Thanks, Wormy.” Peter gave him a blinding smile back. Remus truly loved all the Marauders, of course, but he often found Peter being most in-tune to his moods and feelings. They all four were friends, but James and Sirius were quite clearly brothers, had been since before Sirius had moved in with the Potters, and that had drawn Peter and Remus to become closer than they perhaps would have. On top of that – Peter was the only other Marauder who _actually_ studied, which meant he and Remus spent much more time together.

The group stopped short as they arrived at Flourish and Blotts. It took some effort for Remus to pull himself out of the overwhelming feeling of being in public, and by the time he was able to focus it was clear that Mr Potter and the shop associate at the door of the store were in a heated argument.

“I will _not_ have you pointing that wand at my children,” Mr Potter was saying angrily. James, Peter, and Sirius all looked horrified, and were watching the argument, Peter’s mouth agape.

“Just a formality,” the shopkeeper was mumbling. He was small and looked young, possibly a boy just out of Hogwarts, and he seemed to quail under the look Mr Potter was giving him.

Because of the hubbub, it took Remus a moment to notice the sign on the door.

 _All patrons will subject to inspection to determine blood-status and breed before entry_.

Remus felt immediately sick, vaguely heard Mr Potter shouting, now that “A spell can’t determine anyone’s blood or creature status _you insufferable idiot_!”

The world was collapsing on his chest. He tried to hide his laboured breathing, couldn’t let the rest of Diagon see how much this was affecting him because _that wasn’t safe_ but his vision was darkening and there were sparks in his eyes and his lungs couldn’t hold air and all he could see was the shopkeep’s red face –

“Breathe, Moony,” the voice was behind him and he might not have recognized it in his panic but of _course_ he did because it was Sirius with his chest against Remus’ back and his arms around his sides, squeezing his body back together again; picking up the pieces of his panic. “If they won’t let us in, we’ll go somewhere else. Nothing bad will happen.”

Remus felt Sirius’ chest move in and out, trying to emulate his steady breathing, feeling his heart slow and his vision return.

“If it weren’t for me-” he choked out.

“We would never go in anyways,” Peter said – Remus hadn’t realized Peter was still beside him through the panic, his friend unwavering as always. “I can admit that you are our sense of morality usually, but _sometimes_ we have morals without you, Remy.”

Remus felt himself choke out a laugh, tried to ignore the disappointment he felt when Sirius stepped away. James had stepped in now, in front of his father, looking deadly calm but radiating energy – the same way he did when McGonagall approached him to blame him for a particularly brilliant prank that he had definitely pulled off.

“Do it, then,” James said, calmly. “Scan me. We’ll see if it works.”

The shopkeep gulped, but cast a non-verbal spell at James. He glowed orange for a second – it was bright and James made a face.

“Human, pure-blood,” the shopkeep said, almost nervously.

James grinned wickedly at him. “Wrong,” he said, firmly but quietly. “ _I’m a werewolf_.”

Remus could smell the terror coming off the shopkeep in waves – hated that he could – wished James had picked _any other creature_ to prove his point.

“ _James Fleamont Potter_ ,” Mr Potter growled, before the shopkeep or any of the other boys could say anything. “It is _absolutely not appropriate_ to use such a stigmatized group of people ,l890uoto get your point across.”

“Dad-” James groaned, and Remus was sure he was going to say something about blowing his cover and revealing that James was not, in fact, a werewolf, when the shopkeep made a squeaking noise. They all turned bewilderedly to him.

“ _Fleamont Potter_ ,” he gasped. “I am so sorry, sir,” he continued in a high-pitched, pinched voice. “I should never have questioned your-” he cast a disparaging look at the group “- _family_. You are on our accepted list, of course. You need only to identify yourself at the doors. I am _so sorry_ for the trouble – please feel free to choose a potions book, on the house!”

Mr Potter gave the boy the coldest glare Remus had ever seen. He shuddered, despite himself – he had never seen Fleamont Potter look anything more than loving and indulgent.

“Take my name off your list,” he said to the shopkeep, enunciating every word. “I will _not_ stand for this discriminatory garbage. I won’t be shopping here again, nor will any of my friends.” He turned towards the Marauders, his face immediately adopting its usual gentle expression. “Let’s go, boys. We’ll find your books elsewhere.”

In the end, they found a small hole-in-the-wall bookstore at the border of Diagon and Knockturn Alleys. The owner was a friendly, if frail-looking squib named Matilda who gave them all chocolate frog cards. Mr Potter took it upon himself to purchase books for all four of the boys, wouldn’t listen to Remus’ protests that he had his own money, and left Matilda a gigantic donation of galleons, promising to recommend the shop to all his friends as well as the Hogwarts teachers. When they left, Remus was still feeling distinctly sick to his stomach and panicky.

The apothecary was easier. It was clear that the shop owner had to qualms about letting anyone into his store, and they were in and out with distinct ease. Remus couldn’t settle the feeling in his stomach, though. He wanted to vomit and scream and cry and rip the world apart all at once.

The boys were to split ways then, and Pete dashed off with hardly so much as a goodbye when he spotted Mary across the street. James stuck around, giving Remus concerned looks as he made plans with Sirius about when and where they would meet up, as well as how they would find Pete afterwards. Finally, James pulled himself away from Sirius but not before giving Remus a quick hug. He appreciated it, especially because James was clearly worried about finding Lily before she ran into any similar nonsense.

“Looks like it’s just you and me, Moony,” Sirius said with a lopsided grin. “D’you want to go into Gambol and Japes?”

Normally, Remus would have been absolutely positively on board with going into the joke shop. He didn’t love it himself, he always thought the best pranks the Marauders did were the ones they came up with all on their own, but he could hardly resist seeing the exited expressions that always appeared on James and Sirius’ faces. Today, though, he just wanted to disappear from the world. Instead of replying, he shook his head numbly at Sirius.

“Okay,” Sirius said. Remus saw him take a breath – he knew he was being difficult. He wanted to help, to fix it – if he weren’t a werewolf, even if he were still a half-blood, none of this would be a problem. Instead, they couldn’t even go into Diagon anymore.

“It’s not your fault,” Sirius said sharply, as if reading his thoughts. “This is horrid, even by horrible pure-blood standards.” Remus felt Sirius’ hand brush his shoulder lightly before dropping, as if Sirius had thought better of it. “We’ll go to Fortescue’s – he’s a good bloke, won’t care who we are, and then we can wait for the others at the Leaky, okay?”

“That sounds good,” Remus responded, after drawing a deep breath. Truthfully, he didn’t want to go anywhere except back to the Potters’, but was gratified nonetheless that Sirius was taking matters into his own hands and making decisions. If Remus were alone, he probably would have been stuck outside Flourish and Blotts still, a gaping, panicking idiot.

He followed Sirius back down the street into the heart of Diagon Alley where Fortescue’s was located and let the other boy buy him a bowl of ice cream that changed flavour every bite. Sirius insisted that Remus guess each flavours he had chosen, too. 

“Dark chocolate, chocolate fudge, and chocolate brownie?” Remus asked after the first three bites.

Sirius pretended to fall over in shock. “How could you tell? They’re all _practically the same_.”

The answer, of course, was that the wolf knew. The wolf could _always_ distinguish between flavours and tastes. But they were in public, so instead he smiled at Sirius and said simply, “I know my chocolate.”

When they had finished, they wandered their way slowly back to the Leaky Cauldron, although Remus noticed that Sirius didn’t dare suggest they go into any shops, even when his eyes lit up as they passed Quality Quidditch Supplies.

“How are you feeling?” Sirius finally asked him. Remus had known the question was coming, but still wasn’t sure how to answer.

“I should have expected everything,” he settled on saying. “I feel like an idiot.”

“You couldn’t have expected it,” Sirius said. Their arms bumped as they walked. “Not even Dad did, and they’ve been paying the closest attention of anyone to make sure it was safe for us to visit Diagon.”

Remus shrugged. He still felt stupid – he hadn’t even planned on wearing robes and everyone else had already known that was a bad idea. He hadn’t had a clue even though he’d been in the same place as them, receiving the same news, for three weeks of the summer.

“Do you think that spell would have worked?” Remus asked quietly. It was frightening, to think someone could so simply cast a spell to find out what he really was.

“No,” Sirius said with a shake of his head that reminded Remus distinctly of what he was like as Padfoot – loyal and shaggy. Definitely shaggy. “It was a dud to scare people – there’s no way there’s a spell that can do that, it’s next to impossible.”

“I don’t know, Pads,” Remus said with a sigh. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re able to come up with something.

Sirius just shook his head again. “You should know this, Moony, it’s not how it works. Blood status, or even creature status,” he cringed as he said the words, “isn’t something that can be found out like that. There’s nothing different about you, except during the full moon.” He cast Remus a wry smile. “And it’s not as though they’d need a spell at that point to know what you are.”

Remus smiled back in spite of himself – but Sirius wasn’t done. “It’s not like- like a disease,” he continued, “that a diagnostic spell can detect. It’s just you and you’re just as human as the rest of us.”

Something warm was growing in Remus’ belly. He did his best to shove it down and ignore it, wasn’t ready to be feeling things like that over _Sirius’_ words – who was saying these things, of course, as no more than a friend.

“Still,” Remus said with a sigh. “Even if it can’t detect anything, it doesn’t sit right with me. It means that muggleborns and- and people like me won’t even _try_ going places that are using a spell like that, just in case. And then what? Suddenly there’s a whole part of society we can’t access – _just in case_.”

Sirius cast a look towards him that Remus couldn’t decipher. Was he concerned? Should Remus have not said anything? Perhaps he did sound a little hysterical. Then, suddenly, Sirius was grabbing his arm, pulling him down an alley between two shops. They stopped moving when Remus hit a wall with his back. Sirius was crowding him, now, and Remus knew his breathing was uneven, hoped Sirius couldn’t tell.

“Remus,” Sirius said, his head bent inches from Remus’ own, eyes piercing, “I swear to Merlin that I will tear down this world, brick-by-brick-”

“Padfoot,” Remus tried with a nervous laugh, wanting to get out before something bad happened, before he cried, before he tried to kiss Sirius.

“No, let me finish,” Sirius said, although he did take a half-step back, giving Remus more room to breathe suddenly. “I will tear down this world, brick-by-brick, until it’s safe for you to live here. I won’t stop, Rem, I swear, until you can do everything that any other wizard can do without being afraid. I _promise_.”

“Pads,” Remus tried again. He felt choked up, wasn’t sure what to say or how to respond, too aware of the fierce love blooming in his chest. “You can’t promise something like that.”

“Too bad,” Sirius responded, his dark eyes shining brightly in the dim alley. “I just did.”


	4. Chapter 4 - Lily

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I...did not proof read this and i know there are typos so.. i am sorry, haha. If i get another couple chapters written this week i'll consider a bonus christmas chapter ;)

They were running late, again. Lily was pretty sure, after spending a summer with her, that Marlene was late no matter where they went – and that at Hogwarts the only thing that kept her on time was Mary. Without Mary here, there was nothing to stop Marlene’s rampaging lateness, apparently.

“I thought you packed last night, Marlene,” Marlene’s mum said from the door. They weren’t _catastrophically_ late yet, Marlene’s parents were taking them to the platform by side-along apparation, but still – it was _ten minutes_ until the Hogwarts Express left.

“I did!” Marlene hollered back. Mrs McKinnon – who insisted Lily call her Sally, although Lily had never gotten the hang of it, exchanged an exasperated look with Lily.

“Every year,” she sighed, quietly enough so only Lily could hear. “Every year, Lily, this is my life. Every year we are _almost_ late. You’d think she’d learn, but here we are, seven years later.”

Marlene came barreling down the stairs, then. “I have everything,” she said, giving her mum a bright smile. Lily had to stifle a laugh behind her hand.

Mrs McKinnon rolled her eyes good-naturedly. For a moment Lily felt a sick twist of longing for her own mum. She pushed it down, did her best to smile at Marlene instead while Mrs McKinnon waved her wand to shrink down their trunks and luggage.

“Right girls,” she said, after tucking everything into the pockets of her robes. “Each of you grab an arm.” The girls did as they were told. As soon as Lily had latched on tightly, Marlene’s mum turned and they were absorbed in the frightening, choking sensation of apparation.

Lily gasped for breath as they landed on the platform, her ears barely picking out Marlene’s words of, “Only a little more practice and we’ll be able to do a jump that long on our own!”

Lily privately thought she would rather do almost _anything_ else than apparate. As soon as she graduated Hogwarts, she’d get a car instead.

They each took their luggage hurriedly from Marlene’s mum with fleeting goodbye hugs and dashed to the train as it whistled to signal two minutes until departure. Marlene was giggling as they walked down the corridor of the train, looking for Mary and Alice.

“That was close,” Lily said wryly as the train began to move.

“Well it’s no fun if we’re _on time_ ,” Marlene responded, swishing her blonde hair out of her face. Lily had cut her hair short again, it was back to just grazing the bottoms of her ears, but Marlene had let hers grow over the summer and it looked magnificent.

Finally, they found Alice and Mary in a compartment halfway down the train. Lily said a quick hello, handing her trunk to Marlene who enlarged it for her and put it on the luggage rack.

“I have to go,” Lily said apologetically. “Prefect meeting.” She made a face at her friends to show how thrilled she was at the concept. It was true, she was mostly worried – now that she was head girl she had to run the meetings, and with James Potter to boot. Not that he was horrid, not anymore, but he had never been a prefect before, and Lily felt sure that she would end up taking on the brunt of the work.

She ran into Emmeline Vance on the way to the Prefect’s compartment – the other girl was in the other seventh year Gryffindor girls dormitory and was the other seventh year girls prefect, aside from Lily.

“Congrats on Head Girl,” she said warmly, noting the badge on Lily’s chest.

“Thanks,” Lily said back with a smile. She didn’t spend much time with Emmeline in general, most of the girls suck to their own dormitories – it was just how the friend groups had happened, really, but she generally liked Emmeline. They had become closer when they were both made prefects, often patrolling together.

When they entered the prefects compartment together – it was a double-sized compartment to house everyone it needed to during meetings – she was surprised to see James already there, talking with Remus.

Severus was there too, in the corner looking sullen. Lily tried to avoid the way her gaze was drawn to him. It had been two years since they had been anything close to resembling friends, but it was hard, still, to see him and _not_ want to talk to sit with him or talk to him the way they did when they were younger. Instead of dwelling on it, she made her way over to James and Remus.

Both boys smiled at her as she approached. Their heads had been bent over a parchment – it looked like a list of names.

“What are you two doing?” she asked, sliding into a seat next to James.

“Train patrol list,” James said, giving her a guarded look. “I drafted it last night, Moony was just helping me make sure it actually…works, since it’s not as though I’ve done this before.”

Lily tried to hide the shock on her face, but from Remus’ brief smile, she suspected she failed at least a little bit. “Thanks,” she decided to say instead. “That will make this meeting go much smoother.”

James smiled and ran a hand through his hair. She knew now, of course, that it was a nervous habit – tried to ignore the flutter she felt in her stomach when she realized he was nervous because he was trying to impress her.

“We should set a date for a meeting before term starts, so we can set regular patrols then instead of now,” she said. “Lots of heads set the schedule on the train, but everyone has to switch their days around anyway once they get their club and quidditch schedules. I was thinking we set a temporary one for the first couple of weeks and then revisit it once extracurriculars really start up.” Lily paused for a breath. She had said quite a mouthful, wasn’t sure if James had kept up, if he even knew what she was talking about.

“Sounds good,” was all he said in response. She raised an eyebrow at him.

“I prepared him well,” Remus put in. James looked down, Lily suspected he was heating with a blush.

“Classes start tomorrow,” James said, “but then it’s the weekend. You and I can take tonight’s patrol, and tomorrow’s. We can have everyone meet Saturday afternoon.”

“Good idea,” she said. She was definitely impressed with him – even though it felt sort of rude for her to be. But this was _James Potter_ , who never followed the rules, taking initiative to set up a patrol schedule a prefect’s meetings. What was the world coming to, she thought, when James Potter of all people was the responsible one of the two of them.

The last of the prefects were trickling in – James had gone back to talking to Remus about some prank they had pulled on the Potters during the holidays and Lily did her best to tune them out, instead taking in the faces of the new fifth year prefects. The new Slytherins had immediately sat down with the rest of the Slytherin group, including Severus. Typically, tight-knit prefect groups were good, but she wasn’t sure how she felt about the Slytherin’s being so close, especially given what she knew about Sev.

The Hufflepuff fifth years had come in with one of the Gryffindors – a girl who’s name Lily was fairly certain was Darcy Evander – and a fifth year Ravenclaw boy. The other Gryffindor and Ravenclaw fifth years trailed in directly behind them, although they kept themselves a little bit apart from the group. This was good, Lily thought – the more prefects were friendly with each other the easier swapping patrols was, as well as the way the group meshed generally during meetings.

“Alright,” Lily said, loudly, when the last prefect finally trickled in – she stood up as everyone turned to look at her. “As most of you know already, I’m Lily Evans, and I’ll be your Head Girl for the year. I thought we could do some quick introductions, we’ll give you the patrol schedule, and set a meeting time this weekend to go over patrols for the first couple of weeks as well as rules.”

“What’s he doing here?” a seventh year Ravenclaw named Jones interrupted, jutting his head at James. Lily looked over, a little helplessly, but James had already given him a charming smile. He stood beside Lily.

“I’ll start with introductions, then,” he said cheerfully, though Lily could tell his voice was strained. “I’m James Potter. I’m sure most of you know me.” He smirkled a little when a couple of the fifth year girls tittered. Lily elbowed him hard in the side, but he ignored her.

“I know I wasn’t a prefect before, but the Headmaster felt I was a good fit for Head Boy this year.” Jones scoffed, loudly. “Believe me, I’m just as shocked as you are, but as long as no one causes any issues,” he glanced over at the Slytherins, “we should all get along just fine.”

Despite herself, Lily let her gaze follow his to the Slytheirns in the corner of the room. They were sat huddled together, eyeing James with clear animosity. This year was going to be such fun.

“I want to see you listening to him,” Lily followed up. “Or I’ll go right to gettting the Headmaster involved.” She eyed Jones especially, who was still huffing loudly. “We don’t need anyone causing problems and ruining prefect duties for anyone else. It’s a privilege for you all to be here – and I’ve seen the Headmaster take that privilege away before.”

Her claim wasn’t true, strictly speaking – she hadn’t seen it, only _heard_ of it – but it did its job. Jones shut his mouth, and the Slytherins, the fifth years, at least, quieted down some, too. The rest of the meeting went mostly without hitch – they assigned patrols, partnering fifth years with sixth and seventh years from their houses in order to learn the ropes, and scheudled a meeting for Saturday. The whole meeting couldn’t have taken longer than a quarter of an hour, although there wasn’t a clock in the compartment to check.

When they dismissed the prefects, the Slytherins were the first out the door, of course. James gave her a look as they left, that seemed to say _Can you believe them?_ She rolled her eyes in response.

It took what felt like ages for the room to clear out, until only one Hufflepuff sixth year remained, clearly intent on talking to them. James waved Remus ahead and he gave Lily a small squeeze on the shoulder as he went by. She made a note to catch up with him properly, sooner rather than later. Perhaps she’d schedule them a patrol together.

“I don’t mean to be a bother,” the Hufflepuff, Lisa, said as soon as Remus had left. “It’s just that I was wondering if I could maybe swith patrol partners for today?”

“What’s wrong with…” Lily scanned the list quickly, seeing Lisa was paired with a fifth year Hufflpuff boy, “What’s wrong with Mark?” she asked.

“Well,” the girl mumbled something that Lily didn’t catch. James, however, narrowed his eyes.

“What was that?” Lily followed up gently. “I couldn’t hear you.”

James gave her a funny glacne – it looked almost worried – as he ran his hand through his hair.

“I said,” Lisa said, more loudly this time, “That I don’t want to be paired with him because he’s a muggleborn, and I shouldn’t be seen with him. It’s not right.”

Lily couldn’t help it – she gaped. Of all the possible explanations, this was furthest than what she had thought likely. It was true that there was plenty of anti-muggle and muggleborn sentiment in the wizarding world right now – she had seen it firsthand in Diagon Alley, although she did her best to remain above it all – but experiencing at Hogwarts was different. She had known it was coming, known it existed, but even then, had never had anyone other than some of the more horrible Slytherins say anything like that to her.

“Okay,” James said, clearly seeing that she was uanble to speak. “That’s not an option.” His tone was strange, almost friendly, and definitely forced, but she could tell his gaze on the girl was harsh. “First of all, I’d be careful who you say things like that to. For example, your Head Girl is muggleborn, and she’s probably the brightest witch of our age.”

Lily tried not to blush and was sure she failed, despite the circumstance. She did take pleasure in noting that Lisa had blushed, too, and looked almost uncomfortable. She was avoiding Lily’s gaze – not that Lily was looking at her, focussed as she was on James.

“Second of all, we will _not_ be assigning patrol partners by blood status, and if you have issue with that I’m happy to take your resignation right now.” The girl shook her head vehemently at James, who nodded curtly at her in response. “Then I’ll expect to see you patrolling with your partner when the time comes. Understood?”

“Yes!” she squeaked, before dashing out the door.

“Some people,” James muttered. He turend to Lily, who realized a second too late that she was still gaping at him. She closed her mouth.

“That was,” she said instead, “not what I was expecting.”

James gave her an unreadable look. “Me, or her?” He ran a hand through his hair.

“Both, I suppose,” she responded honestly. “I hope she won’t be a problem again.” She reached for the door to the compartment, stepping out ahead of James. They fell into step in the corridor.

“If she is I’ll go to Dumbledore,” he said resolutely.

“I never thought it would be a Hufflepuff who was the first to protest,” she said, finally. It seemed strange to her, really that it wasn’t-

“Slytherin doesn’t own the rights to prejudice, you know,” James said, reading her thoughts. He gave her a wry smile. “Still, you’re right. I’m sure we’ll hear it from everywhere, though. Gryffindor included.”

“Your family is pure-blood,” Lily said suddenly. She stopped in her tracks for a moment. James ended up a couple paces in front of her, looking back with a raised eyebrow.

“Astute observation, Evans,” he rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “Would you like an award for that bit of knowledge?”

Lily sighed. She couldn’t help but feel he was being a bit prickly about what she said. And perhaps he was – she hadn’t been trying to _accuse_ him of also thinking blood status was important. It was more that she was curious about why he didn’t seem to think that at all. He started walking again, and she had to jog to catch up.

“I just meant – I mean, you and Black aren’t…horrible. About blood status, that is. But you just as easily could be,” she stuttered.

James slowed his stride slightly, giving her a small smile when she caught up. “We could be,” he said finally, “but over the years the Potters have perfected the art of being a pain in the ass to pure-blooded society as a whole, as my Dad would say. Sirius managed to learn how to do that in eleven years, though.”

She snorted, rather inelegantly. “Black’s always been an arse, I’m not surprised he started young.”

He barked a quick laugh – as if she had startled it from him. Lily was proud of herself for a moment.

“I’m going to tell Sirius you called him an arse,” James said, then. She didn’t miss the teasing note in his voice, or the way he ran his hand through his hair.

“You should,” she said. “Knock his ego down a notch. It’ll be good for him.”

They paused as they arrived at the girls’ compartment. Lily suddenly felt uncomfortable, and James was looking everywhere _except_ at her.

“I was thinking,” he said suddenly. She looked up in surprise. “I was thinking, maybe _Operation Daily Prophet_ could meet before the prefect meeting on Saturday?”

Something in Lily’s chest deflated, although she couldn’t tell what. “Sure,” she said, with a smile she hoped wasn’t strained. “I’ll let the girls know.”

With that, she pulled open the door to the compartment, stepping in before he could say anything else. She was met with the sigh of Alice and Mary chatting – _too_ excitedly – and Marlene reading a book _upside down_.

“Alright, how much of that did you lot hear?” she asked with a sigh.

Marlene raised her eyes to look at Lily above the book. “Whatever could you be talking about?” she asked, batting her eyelashes at Lily. “I’ve just been reading, and Alice and Mary have been chattering on since you left.”

Lily sat down beside Marlene, reached out, and batted her book to the ground while Alice and Mary collapsed into giggles on the other bench. “You were reading it upside down, you numbskull,” she said, rolling her eyes fondly at Marlene. “I suppose I don’t need to tell you that we’re meeting on Saturday, then.”

“Nope,” Mary said between giggles. “We heard that loud and clear.”

“Honestly Lils, if you don’t want to be heard you shouldn’t talk so loudly,” Alice added. She had composed herself, but was still grinning widely. Lily felt her face heat.

“We weren’t talking loudly,” she said mulishly.

“I can’t believe he didn’t kiss you,” Marlene said with her own giggle. “You nearly ran away from him though, maybe that was why.”

Lily sunk low into her seat. “I didn’t run away,” she said, giving Marlene her best angry pout. “And he doesn’t want to kiss me.”

“Oh, he does,” Alice said, waggling her eyebrows up and down. “He just doesn’t have the guts. Honestly, Lils, you’ll just have to kiss him first.”

“I have kissed him!” she exclaimed, unable to help herself. “ _Twice_.”

“Oh, poor Lily,” Marlene said. “Stop making fun of her.” She rubbed Lily’s head – quite condesendingly, if anyone were to ask Lily. No one did, of course. “She can’t help that James has been pining for her since he asked her out in third year. He doesn’t know what to do with himself now.”

“ _Merlin_ , Marlene,” Lily groused, “He’s not pining for me just because he asked me out _once,_ when we were _twelve_ , for our first Hogsmeade weekend. That doesn’t even count.”

Mary began laughing uproarously. “I remember that weekend, Marls went on a _date_ with Black.”

Lily found herself able to laugh this time, at her friend’s expense. It was Marlene’s turn to look mutinous.

“We were _twelve_ ,” Marlene groaned, then slapped a hand over her mouth when she realized what she said.

“Ha!” excaimed Lily. “See? It doesn’t mean anythign when you’re twelve. Plus, he’s dated people since.”

The wicked gleam in Marlene’s eye was back. “That was just practice,” she said, grinning woflishly at Lily. Instead of responding, Lily slapped her friend’s arm – none too lightly, either.

“I have something to tell you lot, but I shan’t if you’re going to be nosy about me and James.”

“You and James, now, is it?” Marlene said. She shrieked when Lily began swatting at her repeatedly with both hands. It’s not as though it hurt Marlene – she had been a beater on the house quidditch team for years. If anything, it hurt Lily’s hands, but it made her feel better nonetheless.

“Seriously, Marls,” she said when she was done. “This is important.”

“Fine, fine,” Marlene grumbled back. She settled herself back into her seat but slung her legs up and onto Lily’s lap, taking up most of the bench. Lily cast Alice and Mary a look as if to say, _Can you believe her?_ Alice just shrugged and Mary gave her a wicked grin. Honesly, those two were useless sometimes.

Once everyone was settled, she recounted the story of the Hufflepuff, Lisa, and how James had reacted. The story was met with stunned silence for a moment. Both Marlene and Mary looked sufficiently shocked, but Alice – Alice just looked outraged.

“That _bitch_ ,” Alice said finally. Lily raised her eybrows back, and Alice flushed. She never swore, really (with the exception of swearing at James and Black when they deserved it, of course).onesadf

“I _can’t_ belive it.”

“Can’t you?” Marlene said after a beat of silence. “Because I can. This whole world is a disaster.”

Lily closed her eyes and leaned her head back. She agreed, if she were being honest. Perhaps it had been naïve of her to think Hogwarts would be okay, that the prejudice wouldn’t make its way here. Naïve, even, to think that her only trouble would come from the Slytherins this year. Of course James had been right – Slytherin didn’t own prejudice.

“Lils?” she heard Mary ask. She opened her eyes to see her friends concerned face staring back at her across the compartment. “Alright?”

“Alright,” Lily said, doing her best to hide her sigh. “Just thinking, is all.”

“Thinking about a certain boy, I’m sure,” Marlene said with a cackle. She nudged Lily’s side with her toe, and Lily pretended to slap her, but couldn’t help giggling a little herself.

They passed the rest of the train ride, and the sorting, _and_ the feast, in giggles and excitement. Lily tried not to let the train ride dampen her spirits for the start of her _last year at Hogwarts_ affect her spirits, but it did anyways.

By the time the feast was done, she just wanted to curl up in her bed in her dormitory, maybe with a good book, until she was ready to fall asleep. Life, of course, had other plans.

Lily entered the Common Room arm-in-arm with Alice, who was giggling about Frank as usual. The first through fourth years were already past their curfew and were nowhere in sight – but other than that, the common room was full. There was loud music playing from the wireless – Lily couldn’t help but laugh when she realized it was Queen – and almost every other fifth through seventh year was present, most with butterbeers in hand. Her eyes narrowed, looking for the culprits – until she spotted one near to the portrait hole.

“Black,” she said, rasing her voice to get his attention. He was standing with Emmeline, looking positively _too_ happy.

“Aw, Evans,” he excused himself from Emmeline, who cast a worried look in Lily’s direction. “Butterbeer?” He held out a cup of the drink as he approached. Lily raised her eyebrows at him, doing her best to hide her amusement. She should _not_ be amused about a party on the first night back. Still, she took the offered butterbeer.

“ _What_ is going on?” she asked after taking a sip. Black grinned at her.

“It’s Pete’s birthday party, of course. Figured we should have a big one, last year and all.” He slung an arm around her shoulder, dramatically as usual, and guided her towards the couch by the fire, where Remus and Peter were already sitting. Sirius dropped himself on the couch, pulling her with him and _tactfully_ igoring her when she shrieked in shock.

She fell across Remus, who was looking down at her bemusedly. She noticed his wince, of course – the full moon had happened right at the end of the summer and Lily wasn’t surprised he was still sore. “Sorry, Rem,” she said, careful to avoid leaning on him as she sat up.

“’s alright, Lils,” he smiled back at her. Sirius grabbed her elbow and helped her the rest of the way up.

“Happy birthday, Peter,” Lily said once she had righted herself. She leaned over Remus to ruffle Peter’s hair. He grinned good-naturedly at her.

“Thanks, Lils,” he said. “It probably didn’t need to be so…” he looked around the room. “ _Large_ ,” he finally settled on.

“Dramatic,” she added, nudging Black playfully.

“Yeah, that,” Peter responded with a laugh. “But these three wouldn’t let me get away with anything smaller.”

“That, Pete, is because you’re the best,” said Remus, smiling at his friend. Lily smiled, too, and leaned back against Black. Sometimes it still astounded her how comfortable she had become around the Marauders in the past year.

“Speaking of Potter,” she began, but was interrupted by Sirius.

“You don’t want to know, Evans,” he said from behind her. Remus looked like he was stifling a giggle. Peter wasn’t paying attention – Mary had just walked up and had perched herself on the arm of the couch beside him. She gave Lily a smile when she caught her eye.

Lily craned her neck around to look at Black. “It’s his first day as Head Boy,” she groaned. “You can’t seriously tell me he’s breaking rules already.”

“Better you don’t know, then,” Remus said with a laugh. She could feel Black snickering behind her, too, although she couldn’t hear it over the music.

As if they had summoned him by talking about him, James walked in through the portrait hole. Lily watched him look around for his friends, hands full of bags that looked suspiciously like Honeydukes bags.

Lily took a moment to watch him – even though she could _feel_ Black watching her watch him which was hardly fair at all. He had big bags in each hand, and a half, almost subconscious crooked smile off his face. Lily tried to ignore the way it made her heart beat a little harder to see him so at ease and happy.

James paused in the entryway to the common room, clearly looking for his friends – or for Lily? No – probably his friends. It was Peter’s birthday, after all. He was halfway through the motion of ruffling his hand through his hair when he caught sight of them, or Sirius, really, and then he was smiling properly and well, was it really her fault if it took her breath away just a _little_?

Her eyes tracked him across the room until he dropped onto the couch, half on top of Sirius and half on top of Lily. Her heart was racing faster now, but she did her best to raise her eybrow cooly at him as Sirius shuffled over to make room.

“Do I want to know where you got that?” she asked, by way of greeting.

“Honeydukes?” he said, with a charming _James Potter grin_. Sirius was watching them carefully, as if unsure whether they were about to fight or not.

“Do I even need to tell you how _wrong_ it is that you snuck out on your _first night_ as Head Boy?” she felt Remus laughing beside her, and it took all her self control to not turn aroudn to give him a piece of her mind, too.

He looked at her, not even conealing his mischevious grin. “We could skip the lecture, maybe,” he said.

Lily glanced over at Remus, who was laughing hard on her other side. She nudged him with her elbow. “Don’t encourage him, you’re horrible.” He just laughed harder.

Sighing, she turned to James. “I’m tempted to forgive it,” she said, “but only if you have a bar of Honeyduke’s finest in there.”

Before she could even blink, there was a bar in her hand. Sirius grinned at her from James’ other side. “Knew I liked you for a reason, Evans,” he said cheekily.

Lily chose to ingore him, insead settling herself comfortably between Remus and James, her butterbeer in one hand and chocolate in the other. Maybe, every once in a while, a little bit of rulebreaking was alright.


	5. Chapter 5 - Remus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is a bit later than usual! Honestly, i have a bit of a rough time during the holidays, and it was hard finding the motivation to write and edit. I may take a brief hiatus next week. So, expect a chapter two weeks from now instead of one week as usual. I'm hoping I'll end up finding my motivation and being able to post, but honestly who know right now. 
> 
> Your comments continue to make my world go round, though, and I'll catch up as best I can this week!

Remus woke stiffly on Saturday morning to Peter rattling around the dormitory. He stifled a groan – his head was pounding, worse than it usually did by this point after the full moon. He was fairly sure it had something to do with transforming at home, without the Marauders there to make his transformation easier. It was always harder on him when he was at home.

“Sorry,” Peter’s voice came from somewhere outside his curtains. “We wanted to leave you to sleep after yesterday, but I can’t find my ink _anywhere_ and I wanted to write home.”

Remus pulled his curtain aside sleepily to see Peter rummaging through his trunk. He let the curtain fall back – it was darker inside his curtains and the light outside make his headache spike.

“What happened yesterday?” he asked fuzzily. It had been the first day of classes. Double potions with Slughorn in the morning, and then…

“Erm, when you fainted in Potions?” Peter said. His voice was hesitant, as if he didn’t want to remind Remus of what had happened.

“Right,” Remus said with a sigh. It came back to him slowly. He had collapsed near the end of potions. Someone – was it James? – had carried him to the hospital wing. He missed his other classes – arithmancy, transfiguration, and history of magic, he thought. Madame Pomfrey had let him go back to the dormitory after dinner when he promised he would sleep.

Light betrayed his eyes again as Peter slid the curtains open around his bed. Instead of standing there, though, Pete pulled himself onto Remus’ bed and closed the hangings back around them. Remus felt his headache dull slightly.

Peter handed him something – a potion – in a small vial. “It’ll help the headache,” he said with a soft smile.

Remus took it and drank. The taste was slightly bitter, as most headache potions were, but the relief was almost immediate. Remus let himself smile back. “Thanks,” he said. “Where are the other two?”

“Eating,” Peter responded. “I was up earlier to grab a bite with Mary before she went off with Alice for the morning. They went down after we were done. They’re supposed to bring some food back up for you, though.”

Remus’ stomach gave a loud grumble at that, which caused Peter to laugh. He sat himself up further, now that his headache was receding, but drew his blankets around his shoulders. Remus was cold often, but it was always worse after a particularly brutal full moon.

“Rem,” Peter began, snapping Remus out of his reverie. He looked up at his friend, who had crossed his legs at the foot of the bed and leaned in forward, the way he did when he wanted to say something important. Except, he looked apprehensive, almost. Remus felt his stomach churn in nervous anticipation.

“Yeah?” he croaked, throat suddenly dry.

Peter must have noticed his apprehension, because now the other boy was smiling at him gently, eyes searching out Remus’ from beneath sandy-blonde hair. “It’s just – we know the moons are hard on you when we’re not around. Harder, I mean.”

Remus opened his mouth, ready to cut him off; deny what he was saying. But Peter cut him off. “Seriously, Moony. You can brush it off as much as you want, but it’s so obvious. I’m just saying – you really worried us yesterday. If you need to, you know – take a day off, you can. We’ll get notes for you or bring you lunch or whatever you need. We just…we worry.”

“I’m sorry I worried you,” Remus said automatically. His stomach churned again, this time with guilt. Even after all these years, he still had trouble recognizing his limits.

“We’ll always be worried a little, you great git,” Peter responded, nudging Remus in the leg with his toe. “I just mean, if you could collapse less, that would be good, yeah? Or if you’re going to, maybe just do it during an exam? Might get us all out of writing one.”

Remus laughed in spite of himself. He threw a pillow at Peter as the other boy jumped off his bed, the tension dissipated a little bit.

“I am sorry, Pete,” Remus said once they had calmed down. He had slid to the edge of the bed, feet on the floor with his blankets still around his shoulders. “You’re right about the moons being worse. I’m-” he sighed and paused to gather his thoughts. He didn’t want to outright tell Peter that the moons without his friends as Animagi were almost unbearable in comparison; that his body was no longer used to being rend apart during the full moon; that it took him longer and longer to recover every moon he spent alone. So instead, he said, “I just don’t want you lot to feel badly that you can’t be there. I know you’d try if I told you they were worse, and part of me wants that. But- you’re unregistered animagi. If you get caught there won’t be anyone to run with me during the moons. So really, it’s almost selfish.”

“It’s alright, Rem,” Pete said with another calm smile. He lifted himself from the floor (where he had landed after Remus hit him with the pillow) to sit beside Remus on his bed. “James and Sirius probably would, too,” he said with a chuckle. “Try to sneak off and get caught, that is. Pretty hard to catch a rat though”

Remus shot his friend a sideways grin. It was true – if anyone was going to run headlong into a situation without thinking of the situation, it was James and Sirius.

“The more you do things like collapse the more you’ll make them want to, though,” Peter said then. “And I’m not blaming you for not feeling well. I’m just saying – I mean, you could have skipped classes yesterday. The professors would have understood. We would have. And then I wouldn’t have James and Sirius bugging me about what to do for the next hols that there’s a full moon.”

“I know I could have,” Remus sighed. “Sometimes it creeps up on me. But I will try to pay more attention to how I’m feeling, alright?”

“Alright,” Peter said, with another easy grin.

With that settled, Remus went to shower quickly and dress. He did take it slower than he normally would have. He was still feeling achy from the previous day, and after his talk with Peter, well – he didn’t want his friends to have to worry unnecessarily about him.

By the time he was back in the dormitory, James and Sirius were there as well, along with a plate loaded high with meat. Sirius gave Remus a funny look when he walked in.

“Alright, Moony?” was all he said, though.

“Thanks,” Remus decided to respond, grabbing the plate off his nightstand and digging in.

“You’ll have to eat that on the way,” James said to Remus. “We’re tight for time as it is, but I want to be there a few minutes early.”

“To see _Evans_?” Sirius crooned. James swatted him in the side of the head without even looking, but he also ran a hand through his hair. Honestly, the two of them were hard to keep up with, sometimes.

“Wait-” Remus said, realizing he actually didn’t have the foggiest idea what James was talking about. “Where are we going?”

“The Prefect meeting?” James asked. “You know, happening in the Charms classroom in twenty minutes?”

Remus paused, his mouth full of food. He tried to swallow, almost choked, and then settled for saying “Oh” as clearly as he could around his mouthful of sausage.

“If you’re not feeling up to it you don’t have to go,” James said, giving him a hard look. Remus could feel the eyes of Sirius and Peter on him as well, although neither boy said anything.

“No, I’m fine,” Remus said, after swallowing. “I mean, I’m still tired, but it’s okay. We have this, then I have all day to rest.”

“Uh, we have Operation Hogwarts Prophet after lunch,” Sirius said from his perch on his bed. Remus groaned internally – why could he not have a single day off?

“Okay, well, we have those two things and then I can rest. Plus, nothing to do tomorrow except catch up on the classes I missed, and I can do that from my bed if it will make you lot happy.” He tried to smile, tried to make sure his words weren’t coming across as bitter. Given the look on Sirus’ face, he didn’t think he succeeded. But honestly he just wanted to be treated like a normal boy – one who could manage himself, one who didn’t collapse on the first day back in classes. Not one who needed to be babied by his best friends.

“Let’s go, Rem, or we’ll be late,” James said, then. But Remus didn’t miss the warning look he cast in Sirius’ direction, knew that James was just pulling him away from what was sure to be a longer conversation later.

Remus nodded in agreement towards James, following him as he led the way out of the dormitory. “Are you sure you’re alright?” James asked as the door swung shut behind them.

Remus had to take a deep breath to calm his annoyance before answering. “I’m fine, Prongs. Honest. I’m sorry I scared you lot yesterday.”

“It’s alright,” said James. “Just…look, there’s a lot been going on recently and I want you to be prepared so you aren’t overwhelmed when we go in for this meeting but – honestly, Moony, you still look like death.”

Audibly this time, Remus sighed. “Will you feel better if I go to Pomfrey after the meeting?”

James craned his neck to look back at Remus, who was trailing behind him. Eating while walking was a task that required, well – slower walking.

“It’s not my feelings I’m worried about,” he said, sounding almost annoyed. James Potter, who rarely got annoyed. Remus just raised an eyebrow at him, though. If he could handle Sirius Black’s moods, he could handle James Potter’s anything. “Look, it’s just-”

He filled Remus in on what had happened at the end of the last meeting with the Hufflepuff girl, Lisa. Remus had to contemplate the situation before speaking again, and they were nearly to the charms room when he finally broke the silence.

“That’s horrid,” he said, finally. “Especially for Lily. But I don’t understand what it has to do with me.”

James gave him a hard look that Remus couldn’t quite interpret before opening his mouth and closing it a couple times, sort of like a fish out of water, Remus thought. Finally, he said, “It’s because of – you know, your _furry little secret_. And, well, Snivellus is going to be at the meeting. I’m worried-”

“Worried he might say something?” Remus asked, finally catching on. “And people will believe it because I look like shite?”

James shrugged, which Remus interpreted as a yes. They entered the charms classroom together, Remus settling himself on top of one of the desks before he spoke.

“That’s always been a risk, Jamie. You know that. But I don’t think he’ll say anything. He’d be expelled at the very least.” Remus rubbed the back of his head as he spoke, conscious of how James was looking at him – as if he were wrong, or just confused. But he was sure – or at least, fairly sure about this.

He was saved from responding, thank Merlin, by Lily’s timely arrival. She smiled at James first as she walked in, then turned her smile on Remus as she said by way of greeting, “Alright, boys? You look horrible, Rem. Are you sure you’re up to being here?”

James raised an eyebrow in Remus’ direction, as if to say _I told you so_ , but Remus tactfully ignored it. “I’m alright,” he said instead. “I’ll go to Pomfrey before I collapse, this time.”

He smiled at her scandalized look, and even James barked out a quick laugh. “I’m glad we’ve gotten you to the point where you think you should go to Pomfrey _before_ fainting,” James said. “It only took us six years of lectures.”

“Six years of lectures?” said Lily, with a mock-gasp. “And here I thought you could hardly string two words together before sixth year itself.”

This, of course, caused Remus to crack up, while James looked highly offended. “You’re not wrong,” Remus said between giggles. “Pete gave most of the lectures for the first five years.”

“Now that makes more sense,” Lily said, with a wink in Remus’ direction.

They were all laughing by the time the rest of the prefects began filing in. Remus moved to sit properly in his desk – Emmeline had come to sit beside him as Lily and James had headed to the front of the room to gather their notes.

The meeting started off without an issue. They divided up the first week’s patrols rather fairly, Remus thought. Emmeline was his patrol partner for this first week, which was quite alright with him, although this would undoubtedly change once extracurriculars were well and underway. He wouldn’t have been too focussed on patrol partners normally anyways – there weren’t any prefects who slacked off or had horrid personalities or anything. But after hearing the story James told about the conversation with Lisa on the train – he could admit to himself that he was at least a little bit apprehensive.

“Right, we’ll be able to let you all go in a minute, but we have one last order of business.” James’ voice cut through Remus’ thoughts, making him sit up at attention. It was something in the tone of James’ voice, in the confused way Lily was looking at him, that set Remus on edge slightly. “We won’t be tolerating any drama this year, especially nothing about blood status. We will not be granting requests to switch partners for any reasons related to this, and any bullying will be reported directly to Professor Dumbledore. There’s enough tension in the world already without us bringing it into the school. Are we all understood?”

There were quite a few scoffs and eye-rolls mixed in with the nods, but no one complained. Remus noticed that Lisa looked distinctly pink, and Severus was looking downright murderous, but for the most part the prefects simply gathered their things and began departing.

Remus put his head in his arms on the desk and closed his eyes. He did not want to leave until James and Lily were ready. Partially because he wanted to see if anything else was going to happen, but mostly because he felt exhausted and didn’t feel confident about dragging his feet back up to the tower alone, especially considering the events of the previous day. Plus, the headache potion Pete had given him was starting to wear off, and every scrape of chair on stone as the other prefects stood up and moved around felt like a knife to his head.

Of course, no sooner had he put his head down than a voice whispered in his ear, “Watch out, half-breed, or you’ll be next.”

Remus lifted his head to find Severus Snape glaring at him from across the desk. He couldn’t see the other boy’s wand anywhere, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t hiding it in his robes. But still, Remus couldn’t find the energy in himself to deal with this today.

“Whatever, Snivellus,” he said instead, and put his head back down. It was the wrong move – not that there was a right move with Snape – because as soon as his head landed back on his arms, he was struck with the most peculiar feeling of needing to sneeze. Instead of going away after a moment, it intensified – until suddenly he felt his nose hit the desk, despite the fact that his head had not changed positions.

He sat up. With a feeling of horror settling in, he reached up towards his nose. Too soon, his hand hit something in place of his nose – something long and thin and covered in fur – _Snape had given him a snout_!

He yelped; he didn’t want to draw attention to himself, but couldn’t help it. Tears pricked at his eyes and panic clenched at his gut, but he tried to force both away, tried to stop any sort of visible reaction that Snape, who was peering around the door frame looking grimly pleased, would find satisfaction in.

There weren’t many people left in the room, but every single eye turned to look at him as soon as he yelped. He flushed red with shame, blind with panic – did he run out of the room past Snivellus? Stand and face everyone else? Would anyone guess his secret? What if –

Then there was a gentle hand on his shoulder. Lily. She pulled him out of the classroom, giving Snape a hard glare as they went, and into an abandoned classroom beside.

“We need to get you to Pomfrey,” she said.

“No,” Remus responded. He was shaking, didn’t care if his words came across as rude or angry or anything.

“But, Remus, you’ll need to let her fix this!” Lily exclaimed. She was standing in front of him – his back was to the door but he could tell from Lily’s expression that there were people outside trying to peer in.

“No one else can see me,” he gasped. “What if someone sees and guesses? What if it makes someone _figure it out_?”

“No one’s going to guess,” she said. Her voice was calm, but Remus could hardly hear her words. Hardly register them in his brain. “Honestly, everyone will just think it was Snape up to his usual bullshite.” There was a hardness in the way she said his name, an anger that hadn’t always been there.

Remus jumped and clamped his hands to his face as the door opened behind him, his heart racing.

“Just me, Moony,” came James voice from behind him. Remus relaxed slightly as James came up beside him and threw an arm around his shoulders.

“He doesn’t want to go to Pomfrey,” Lily said, with a glower in their direction, “but it’s not as if he can hide in here forever.”

Remus felt James squeeze his shoulders. “I have a plan for that,” he said, with such a James-like grin that Remus couldn’t help but laugh. Except – laughing felt strange with a snout. He had never laughed as a wolf, he supposed; wolves didn’t exactly laugh, anyways, they mostly just howled.

Remus watched Lily watch James curiously as he pulled out a mirror from his pocket. It must look strange to her, he thought, that James was looking at his reflection at a time like this.

“Is now the time to admire your hair, Potter?” asked Lily, as if Remus had read her mind.

Remus half-expected James to have some kind of smart comeback, but instead he just kind of gave her a crooked grin. “Always need to look my best, Evans.”

Lily huffed. Remus kept his eyes trained on her as James said, “Sirius Black,” into the mirror. Her eyebrows rose in shock and Remus had to stifle an odd-feeling snicker at the look on her face when Sirius spoke back.

“Prongs! Meeting done? Did Moony collapse again?” his voice was loud and clear next to Remus, and Remus couldn’t help but let out an indignant yelp.

“I did _not_ ,” he shouted, making sure it was loud enough for Sirius to hear him through the mirror. Lily was giggling now, but he chose to ignore her.

“Oh, sorry Moony,” came Sirius’ voice again.

“Look,” James said. “We have a _situation_. Is Pete with you?”

Sirius was silent for a moment, Remus assumed he was either nodding or shaking his head. “He’s with Mary, I think,” said Sirius.

“Alright, can you get down here as fast as possible? With the cloak and map, please,” James said. Remus was shocked – and glanced over at Lily, who mostly just looked confused. Were they going to let Lily in on practically all their secrets at once? Not even Mary knew, yet, and Peter had been dating her since sixth year.

Sirius asked something that Remus missed, but he caught James’ response. “We had a-” Remus saw James shoot a nervous look at Lily, “ _Snape_ situation.”

“Of course you did at the first prefect meeting of the year,” Sirius scoffed.

He must have severed the mirror connection, because James moved to tuck it into his pocket. Lily moved closer two the two, perching herself on an incredibly dusty desk. Remus realized he still had a hand up over his face to cover his snout, but couldn’t bring himself to drop it. Even if James had seen him as a fully transformed werewolf, this was _different_ somehow. Worse. Especially with Lily here.

“You two,” Lily said, breaking the moment of silence, “Are about to have so much explaining to do.”

James, with his arm still around Remus, led them both toward a desk across from Lily. He hoisted himself up, and once Remus had done the same the other boy’s arm was back around him. James had never been shy with physical touch, really, something Remus was often grateful for. It was a comforting feeling, to be able to physically lean on a friend.

“Well, Evans,” said James, with a cocky grin, “We are about to let you in on a secret or two. Normally we’d have to hex you for knowing, but-” he cocked an eyebrow at Remus “-desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“I am not desperate!” exclaimed Remus, blushing behind the hand that was still covering his nose.

“You are, my furry friend. You are very desperate,” James looked cheekily over at Remus, who removed his hand from in front of his face momentarily to swat at James.

“What was that mirror?” Lily asked instead of acknowledging the banter between the two boys. Which was fair, Remus thought – the Marauders could go back and forth for hours, really.

“It’s a two way mirror,” James supplied. “I have one, Sirius has one, and my dad has one. You just say the name of the person you want to talk to in it. As long as they’re on the other end, you can see each other and communicate.”

“Where did you get something like that?” asked Lily. It was as if the two had completely forgotten about Remus now, still sitting beside James. Not that Remus minded, of course – not with his newfound snout and all. “It must have been terribly expensive.”

James shrugged. “It was an old family heirloom. Dad gave Sirius and I each one to keep when we turned sixteen.”

Lily’s mouth opened and closed a couple times, but no sound came out. Remus had to hold back a laugh. “Your parents…gave you a family _heirloom_ …when you turned sixteen?” she squeaked.

James gave her a funny look, which only made Remus want to laugh harder. “Well yeah. I mean, what good are they going to do if we don’t use them? And they’re downright useful.”

The conversation was saved by continuing by Sirius, strutting in through the door. His long hair fell over his face as he tucked the map in his pocket. Remus felt a surge of longing in his chest, followed by a stronger surge of embarrassment about the situation.

“Alright, what’s the-” Sirius began, before he caught sight of Remus “-oh.” The corner of his mouth tilted up at Remus, who really just wanted to die of embarrassment right there on the spot, more embarrassed than he had ever been at any point in his life. “You’re looking mighty wolfish today.”

Remus let out an exhale of breath – not exactly a sigh, but he wasn’t sure if that was because Sirius’ comment didn’t warrant a sigh, or because he couldn’t really sigh with a snout.

“Snape,” Remus groaned. “Did you bring the cloak? I don’t want anyone seeing me.”

“And map,” responded Sirius.

“Map?” Lily asked.

Sirius gave James a look, and he shrugged in return. “We may as well show her,” he said. “That’s why I wanted Pete here. Guess we’ll probably have to show Mary, too.”

“Well if we’re showing those two we may as well show Alice and Marlene as well,” Sirius said. There was an edge of sarcasm in his voice. “Not like those four can keep a secret between them.”

“Oi!” Lily exclaimed in retaliation. “Of course we can.”

“That remains to be proven, Evans,” said Sirius sulkily. He made eye contact with Remus for a moment, searchingly almost, before sighing. “Fine, if it’ll help get Rem to Pomfrey quicker.”

Remus gave Sirius a small smile in return. Truthfully, he didn’t want to tell Lily – especially without Peter here. It felt like a betrayal of the Marauder spirit. But she’d be relentlessly curious now, and Remus really, _really_ didn’t want to have to go around with a snout any more often than he already did.

“Cloak first, Pads,” James said by way of response. Remus couldn’t help smiling a little bit.

“Flashiest item first?” he asked James.

“Precisely, my dear Moony,” said James. Sirius pulled the cloak out of his satchel. It wasn’t invisible, precisely, when no one was wearing it. Instead, it was a sort of shimmering silvery colour that changed the more you looked at it. Lily, of course, appeared flabbergasted.

Sirius handed the cloak to Remus instead of James, and Remus took it gently. James and Sirius were – well, rough on some items. And even though James swore up and down that this was a genuine invisibility cloak, one that wouldn’t fade or wear down, Remus still liked to be careful. It was quite unique, and quite special, after all.

“Do us the honours, Moony,” Sirius said, gesturing at Remus to put on the cloak. Remus slowly removed his hand from in front of his mouth, watching Sirius’ face carefully for a reaction since he hadn’t seen the snout in it’s full glory before. Sirius didn’t give one. Instead, he just smiled encouragingly at Remus when their eyes met.

Remus swung the cloak around his shoulders, putting the hood over his head simultaneously, laughing when he heard Lily’s yelp of astonishment.

“Remus?” she asked tentatively, looking around the room. He took a moment before responding to creep up to her until he was directly in front of her face.

“Here,” he whispered, causing her to jump and scream. Both James and Sirius were cackling and he let himself laugh a little too, even though it felt weird still, with the snout. Lily huffed, but he could see a small smile forming on her face.

“No wonder you four get away with so much mischief,” she said with a huff. “Honestly, I always wondered.”

“That’s not all,” James said with a grin.

Remus stepped back carefully from Lily. He pulled the end of the cloak up a little bit so the others could see him and know where he was, but he didn’t feel like showing his face now that he could so easily hide it. He drifted to go stand by Sirius instead, who had pulled out the map and tapped it with a muttered “I solemnly swear I am up to no good.”

The password was one of Remus’ favourite parts of the magic. It had been complex to weave into the charms on the map, but every time he watched the lines on the map appear from the blank piece of paper he was always momentarily awed that they had created it.

Sirius handed it off to James and Lily. Lily was looking at it already with wide eyes, fingers roaming across the papers as she drank in all the different details. “Where did you even get this?” she finally asked.

“We made it,” Sirius said proudly. “All four of us together.”

“This is…wow,” she said, looking at each of them in turn and then back down to the paper, as if she couldn’t believe they had actually done something like this. Remus couldn’t blame her, really.

“The first floor hallway to the hospital wing is your emptiest route right now,” James said toward Sirius and the invisible Remus. “Why don’t you two head that way? I have a feeling I’ll be here answering questions for the next little bit.” He grinned at Lily when she looked sheepishly up at him.

“Sounds good to me,” Sirius said, before glancing at Remus’ shoes. “You ready?”

“It feels weird when you talk to my shoes,” Remus said by way of response, following Sirius to the door.

“Well I can’t see the rest of you,” Sirius quipped back with a grin.

Their walk to the hospital wing was quiet. It wasn’t as though they could talk with the occasional student passing by and Remus under the invisibility cloak. Not unless Sirius wanted a reputation as being quite batty, which Remus was fairly sure he didn’t.

When they got to the wing, Madame Pomfrey took one look at Remus and sighed. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me who did this?” were the first words out of her mouth, but Remus just shook his head resolutely.

She ran a few tests on Remus, waving her wand in complicated patterns across his face, while Sirius sat beside him the whole time. After what felt like ages, she sighed.

“Whoever did this was smart,” she said. Remus felt his stomach sink in nervous anticipation – afraid of what she was going to say. “Whoever put this spell on you meant for it to last for about a day. It looks like if I try to reverse anything it will increase the amount of time the transfiguration lasts for. And if I’m not careful, I might make it very difficult to remove. No, the best thing to do is for you to stay here for the night, and if it hasn’t resolved itself by tomorrow at lunch we’ll have to see what Professor McGonagall can do to fix it.”

Remus couldn’t help it – he groaned in response. Madame Pomfrey merely gave him a small smile. “I can’t blame you,” she said to him. “If I were here as often as you, I’d hate me.”

“I don’t hate you!” Remus exclaimed in shock. “You keep me _out_ of the Hospital Wing more than I’d otherwise be here.”

Madame Pomfrey just gave him another small, almost sad smile. “I’ll be back to bring you lunch, alright love?”

Remus just nodded at her as she left, then sunk down in his bed. He’d frown if he could, but the wolf snout prevented it.

“Least it means you get your rest,” Sirius said. He looked as if he were about to reach out to Remus, but he didn’t. He tucked his hands in his lap instead. Remus tried to tell himself he wasn’t disappointed.

“Guess so,” Remus said dully. “I’m going to miss the meeting this afternoon.”

“’S’alright,” Sirius responded gently. “I promise we’ll survive without your genius brains for one day.”

Remus scoffed at that.

“And I’ll visit afterwards to fill you in on what you missed,” Sirius continued.

“Bring chocolate,” Remus said dolefully. “And all my books from yesterdays classes. May as well catch up while I’m here.”

“You know,” Sirius said, a thoughtfully teasing tone to his voice, “I think that sets a record, even for you. Behind on your first day of classes. I’m impressed, really.”

“Shut it, Pads,” said Remus, but he couldn’t help the small grin that broke out on his face. At least – he hoped it looked like a grin, and not like his wolfish mouth wanted to eat Sirius.

Sirius was true to his word later that day. He came back during dinner, lugging Remus’ school things, with Honeydukes chocolate to boot. He flung himself on Remus’ bed when he arrived.

“I can’t believe your books weigh more than mine. I didn’t even think that was possible,” Sirius groaned dramatically. Remus tried to ignore the fact that the other boy’s head was resting on his lap.

“I take more classes than you,” Remus said instead, hoping his voice didn’t sound as wobbly as it felt.

“Still,” Sirius said with a yawn. “We were successful, anyways, with the project. Lils bound a master copy of the book that will go out to everyone. Marlene had an article, and some of the others sent in articles by owl.”

The meeting today, of course, had been to bind their master copy of the publication that would end up sitting at the foot of everyone’s bed – not just when it was distributed, but every time it was updated. They had ironed out the rest of the spells for it over the end of the summer, mostly thanks to Lily. Still, Remus felt a little bit upset that the very first publication had gone out without him present.

“Hmmm,” Remus hummed. “So it’s in everyone’s dormitories now? You did the duplication spell?”

To Remus’ surprise, Sirius shook his head in response. “Evans managed to figure out a time delay on it,” he said. “I told her about your – ah – _snout_ being stuck as is until tomorrow and it gave her the idea.”

“Great,” Remus groaned, throwing his head back against his pillow. “That’s great.”

Sirius gave him a look – just the tips of a grin and a quirk of an eyebrow that made Remus feel like melting a little bit. “It’ll go out tomorrow at breakfast,” he said. “Can’t wait to see how everyone reacts. There were four – maybe five articles in it. One about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, one about the Death Eaters, a couple about some muggle disappearances across England. Benji wrote an interesting one – under a pen name, of course – about the ministry’s role in everything. You’ll like it.”

Remus nodded at Sirius, feeling almost instantly tired. “It’s going to make people angry. So angry.”

“’Course it is,” Sirius responded gently. “But it’s going to make more people feel – well, maybe not happy, but informed, you know? Plus, it’ll piss off Reg and Snivellus, and that’s a bonus to almost anything.”

Remus huffed in response. Sure, he had collapsed during his first day of classes and he how had a twenty-four-hour-snout, but in some ways this felt like the perfect way to end his last year of Hogwarts. Pranks, dinner with Sirius, and political debauchery. Plus, really, what else could go wrong that hadn’t gone wrong yet?


	6. Chapter 6 - Lily

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO SORRY THIS TOOK ME SO LONG TO UPDATE. Returning to school hit me like a truck and I've had a lot of trouble getting my regular routine back on track, which is really stressful for me. But I'm back now, I hope! I think from here on out expect updates once every two weeks. It's a little easier to manage until my schedule works itself back out and I fall into a new routine.
> 
> Anyways, here's some angst and fluff mixed all together along with your daily reminder that James Potter is the most wholesome human on the planet

The first weeks of term passed quickly and uneventfully for Lily. Aside from some small incidents with pure-blood students (and, okay, mostly it was Snape and his gang of idiots), the beginning of September was full of school work, James Potter, and not much else. Quidditch had begun too, of course – and now that Lily was both roommates with Marlene _and_ sort-of-dating James she found herself at almost every Gryffindor practice. She didn’t mind much, she found with surprise. She had always enjoyed Quidditch well enough – but something about it was different when it was _her_ almost-boyfriend flying around and looking spectacular.

Plus, the Marauders would often sneak into Hogsmeade after practices for a round of butterbeer, and they’d let her use the Map to keep lookout. She had been disapproving at first – but honeslty, it was their last year and what would happen if they were caught? It wasn’t as though she had parents to tell, anymore. Plus, Madame Rosmerta at the Three Broomsticks didn’t mind when they came through. If anything, she seemed to find the four Marauders charming.

At the moment, she was sitting on the Quidditch stands with Remus, Peter, and Mary as the noise of practice buzzed around them. James had retained his Quidditch captaincy along with his Head Boy badge, and he was currently ordering Sirius and Marlene – the team’s two beaters – around.

Remus had his Transfiguration book open on his lap. They were supposed to be studying together during the practice – Lily was already feeling up to her forehead in school work and James was the _least_ helpful person when it came to studying, really. Studying had quickly devolved, though – Lily was feeling off, anxious and sad and who-knew-what-else. She wasn’t even really sure why, except the obvious – the world was horrid, her parents were dead, and her sister hated her.

“Alright?” Remus muttered from beside her. She turned her head to face him, doing her best to smile. Remus looked worn and tired, too. So did most of them, if she were being honest. Tension in the school was thick, especially after their first publication made its rounds. There hadn’t been any fallout about it yet, but Lily was sure it was still to come. Even the Marauders were cautious – uncharactersitically for them, they hadn’t pulled a single prank yet this year.

“Yeah,” Lily responded. Remus put his arm around her and squeezed in a quick hug.

“They’re done,” he said as he let go. Sure enough, the Gryffindor team had landed and were heading towards their change rooms. The group of four stood – Lily followed Remus down from the stands and onto the pitch.

She drew her sweater around her as they reached the ground. It was beginning to get dark earlier, and she hadn’t expected it to feel so cold this early in the evening. Lily shifted closer to Remus. His body temperature always ran warm, perhaps because of what he was – she wasn’t sure, but either way, she had often used him as a source of warmth during the chilly Hogwarts winters over the years.

“Cold?” asked a voice from behind her. James was standing just behind her, followed a few paces behind by Sirius and Marlene, who were speaking in excited voices. She wasn’t sure how she hadn’t heard him come up behind her. Perhaps she had just been too absorbed in shivering to notice.

“A little,” she said with a genuine smile this time. She brushed her hair back from her face self-consciously. James always managed to make her feel self-conscious in a way she never had before.

“Too bad you’re not a witch,” he said with a quirked lip. “Then you’d be able to use a spell to warm yourself, and that would just be cheating.”

Lily huffed in annoyance, feeling stupid. Of course she could have used a spell, but even after all these years sometimes she still forgot that she could just… _do things_. Just like that, with the wave of a wand. It seemed too easy.

“Berk,” she settled for saying. She gave James a playful slap across his chest, smiling in spite of herself.

“You’re supposed to offer her a jacket,” Sirius said as he and Marlene approached. He stooped low in a swooping bow before swinging his jacket off his shoulders and holding it out to Lily. Normally Lily would have taken it, just to make fun of James, but –

“Get that away from me!” she squealed. “That smells.”

Sirius just shrugged. “Blood, sweat, and tears, Evans. That’s what it takes to make a Quidditch player like me.”

“A little shower every once in a while wouldn’t hurt, either,” cackled Peter. This earned a snort from Mary and even a giggle from Marlene.

“It’s true,” Marlene said, flashing Lily a grin, “We work so well together because I can always smell him on the pitch.”

Sirius gasped in horror and collapsed to his knees. “You wound me, McKinnon.” Marlene simply rolled her eyes while Remus reached out an arm to help him up.

It was sort of funny, Lily acknowledged. She was also pretty sure the show from Black was mostly because she had seemed off lately – not that he needed an excuse to be dramatic, but still. In fact, she could see both Peter and James watching her. Peter just out of the corner of his eye, but James had both his eyes on her. She tried for a smile, to act as if she had been laughing the whole time, but couldn’t help but feel that she was failing miserably.

“Why don’t we skip the butterbeers today, so Smelly over here can bathe?” James asked. He smiled at Sirius teasingly, but his gaze quickly darted back to Lily. She looked down at her shoes, unsure how to act.

“Oi!” Sirius said, but everyone else was already laughing.

“I think we have some stuff in the dorm anyways,” Remus said.

The group started moving back towards the castle, more subdued than they typically were after a practice. Lily couldn’t help but feel that it was somehow her fault, that she was dragging down the atmosphere of the group. Marlene’s arm was around her shoulders, the taller girl holding her tightly which she found comforting. James was on her other side – she tried to ignore the feeling in her stomach every time their hands brushed as they walked.

It was nice being with everyone, usually. But right now she wanted nothing more than to just curl up in her bed with a good book – or maybe with Marlene to talk about how she was feeling.

“I’m thinking about skipping this one out,” Marlene said into Lily’s ear suddenly. “Just going back to our dorm and starting some school work. What do you think?”

Lily nodded. “I’ll join you,” she said to Marlene, then turned to James. “I think I’ll go back to our dormitory with Marlene,” she said to him. She didn’t miss the disappointed look that flashed across his face, although he hid it quickly. Strangely, it made her chest warm. “I just need some rest, I think.”

“Alright,” James said, his usual charming smile already back on his lips. “If there’s anything I can do for you….”

“I’ll let you know,” she said.

The rest of the walk to the Gryffindor common room was quiet, except for whatever small argument Sirius and Remus were having, but Lily couldn’t hear them well enough to pick up on the details. She was surprised and pleased, however, when James leaned over to brush his lips across her cheek before she and Marlene parted ways with the group. She could feel herself blushing furiously, and knew Marlene noticed.

Marlene jumped on Lily’s bed as soon as they entered their room. Alice was nowhere in sight, likely off somewhere writing to Frank, and Mary was still with the boys and Peter. Lily threw herself down beside Marlene, so they were lying side-by-side facing the top of her four-poster.

“I saw that,” Marlene teased in a singsong voice. Lily’s face heated even more.

“The whole common room probably saw it,” she grumbled, although she wasn’t really upset. She mostly felt _off_ – a weird combination of melancholy and sad and giddy at James’s sort-of-kiss.

“Still!” Marlene squealed. “He needs to ask you out and be done with it, already.”

Lily shrugged self-consciously. She didn’t really want to talk about it, if she were being honest. Because really – why _hadn’t_ he asked her out yet?

“What’s wrong, really?” Marlene asked. Lily had been silent for too long.

“I just-” she paused, searching for words. “I just want to be able to tell my parents,” she said, then. “About James, about Operation Daily Prophet, about the lot of it, really. About Snape being an arse and Black being not-so-bad. About my classes, even.”

“Oh Lils,” Marlene sighed. “I’m sorry.” Marlene’s hand gripped her own suddenly. “I know it’s not the same, but you could write to my mum, you know. She loves you.”

Lily turned to smile softly at Marlene. “I think I’ll do that, actually,” she said. It wasn’t the same, not even close, but maybe it would help satisfy her need to have an _adult_ looking out for her. “I just wish this year could be normal.”

“Me too,” Marlene said quietly. “Me too.”

They talked until there was nothing left to talk about, drawing the curtains of the bed closed when Alice and Mary came in. The other two knew better than to be upset by this, Lily and Marlene did it often through the years when they were upset – greatly preferring the company of each other. By the time they drifted off to sleep, Lily felt almost peaceful.

Her inner peace lasted through part of the next day – all the way through potions with Snape and Herbology, which Lily secretly hated although she was quite good at. Right up until lunch, actually, when she found herself on the way to the Great Hall with Sirius, Remus, and James – Marlene, Peter, and Mary having had Care of Magical Creatures before lunch while they had had Arithmancy.

James was saying something about Hogsmeade the next month – their first Hogsmeade trip of seventh year – and a prank the Marauders were going to pull on Filch as he checked permission slips. Lily personally thought it was quite risky to prank Filch of all people, but it wasn’t as though she could stop them.

They turned a corner into a quiet side corridor on the second floor – it was hardly used, but James and Sirius were convinced it was a faster way to the Great Hall. It was as if, upon passing into the hallway, they had passed through a barrier of some sort. Suddenly, they could all hear laughter. Laughter and sobs.

James was the first to take off running, followed by Sirius. Lily started to follow, but was stopped by Remus’ hand on her arm. “It’s Snape. Snape and Regulus and some others.” He was holding the enchanted map – the Marauders Map – in his hand.

“Shit,” Lily breathed. Anger was boiling her blood, but she was concerned, too, for how Sirius would react. She and Remus took of running as well, almost at the same time.

Following the sounds took them down two more corridors – these were clearly never used, lined with locked classrooms and crumbling stone. Sirius and James were at the very end of the corridor, shouting at the backs of some retreating Slytherins. Before the group turned the corner, Lily identified Snape easily – she knew him like the back of her hand, after all. A sick feeling twisted in her stomach.

She pulled up short just behind Remus, breath coming in short gasps as she struggled to catch it. Remus had the map open again, likely watching the path the retreating Slytherins were taking. He had a hand on Sirius’ arm, as if to stop him from chasing after them.

“Lily,” James said. “Come here.”

He was in the classroom on the left side of the corridor, so she stepped in, too, nudging the door open wider as she went. The first thing she saw when she entered was James kneeling on the floor. The next thing she saw was the broken body he was kneeling over. She couldn’t hold back a gasp.

“She’s alright,” James said, turning to face her. “She had some broken ribs. I just put her to sleep. I don’t know if I can fix them.” His hand came up to rub the hair on his head agitatedly.

“Let me see,” she said, stepping closer. The girl was small – tiny, even for a first year, and wearing Slytherin robes. Lily cast a quick diagnostic spell. James was right, she had some broken ribs and was in shock, but nothing worse.

“What happened?” she asked. Then, turning her wand to the girl’s ribs, she said softly, “ _Brakium emendo_.” It didn’t heal her ribs completely, the diagnostic spell showed, but they were a sight better than they were before. “ _Ferulo_ ,” she cast, watching the magical bandages wrap around the girl’s midsection. It didn’t escape her notice that James was silent, avoiding her question.

“We need to get her to Madame Pomfrey,” she said, turning to him, then. He looked upset, more upset than she had ever seen him.

“I’ll take her,” he said. “And get Dumbledore and Slughorn, too. D’you think – could you stay here and wait for us to come back? Stay with Sirius?”

The look he gave her was pleading. “Are you alright?” she asked instead.

“No, I’m not,” he responded. Lily was surprised, almost, at his candidness. “But Sirius is worse, and this girl is worst of all. I just – need to help her.”

“Alright,” Lily said quietly. They were both still bent over the girl. She leaned back slowly – leaned into James despite herself. “We should wake her first. She shouldn’t be in much pain.”

James nodded and cast the counterspell to his sleeping charm. Lily didn’t recognize the spell – tried to remind herself to ask him about it later. The girl stirred slowly and blinked her eyes open, recoiling immediately when she set eyes on James and Lily.

“It’s alright,” James was the first one to speak. “You’re alright. I’m James and this is Lily. Is it alright if I take you to Madame Pomfrey.”

The girl’s eyes simply widened, and she shook her head. Lily tried to supress a sigh and shifted to sit cross-legged beside the girl, nudging James to do the same.

“I’m Head Girl,” Lily said, “and James is Head Boy. We want to help, but we need to take you to Madame Pomfrey. If you’d like, I can conjure a stretcher so James can take you without touching you.” The girl shook her head emphatically again.

“I could bring Madame Pomfrey here?” James asked. His hand was ruffling through his hair again – the girl was watching his jerky movements, clearly fearful. Gently as she could, Lily took the hand that was in his hair in both of hers, not letting go when he dropped it to his side. He gave her a wobbly smile that warmed her, despite the circumstances.

The girl shook her head “no” again. Lily sighed. “Just go get Pomfrey,” she said. “I’ll sit with her.”

He nodded and squeezed her hand before standing up. The small girl flinched as he stood but otherwise didn’t react. She could hear hushed voices as James exited into the corridor outside before Remus and Sirius entered the room. The girl made a small squeak.

“What’s your name?” Lily tried as the boys approached them. The girl just shook her head again.

“Don’t want to talk?” Remus asked. He sat down beside Lily. She could feel Sirius hovering somewhere behind them.

The girl shook her head again, but Remus just smiled in response. “That’s alright. Are you muggleborn?”

For the first time, the girl nodded her head – although it was only slight, and she was regarding Remus with fearful eyes.

“So is Lily,” Remus said. Lily tried to give an encouraging smile to the girl, but was sure it came out more as a grimace. “And my mum’s muggle,” Remus continued. The girl seemed to relax, now. She was looking back and forth between Remus and Lily with wide eyes. Slowly, she reached out to touch Remus’ arm. It took Lily a moment to realize she was touching the scar there – a scar that Remus explained away as a dog bite, but that she and the Marauder’s knew was the bite of Fenrir Greyback.

Instead of looking alarmed, Remus smiled down at the girl. Lily felt warmth grow in her chest for him. “When I was very small I got attacked,” he said gently. She jumped slightly as a hand came down in her peripheral vision to land on Remus’ shoulder, but it was just Sirius. Remus seemed to ignore it. “It was scary, and I got this scar. But I’m alright now, see?”

The girl tugged on Remus’ arm. He leaned down, seeming to sense what she wanted, bending his head close until his ear was next to her mouth. She must have said something, because he smiled softly at her before shaking Sirius’ hand off his shoulder so he could move to sit next to the girl.

After a moment, Lily decided to leave them to it. Especially once she looked and Black properly and saw the look on his face for the first time that night. He looked…almost destroyed.

“Black,” she muttered, “Come on.” She grabbed him by the arm before waiting for a response, drawing him from the classroom. He followed silently as she lead him through the back corridors of Hogwarts, looking for a specific place.

Finally, after a fair amount of doubling back and feeling lost, she found it. The fourth floor secret passage. Without preamble, she pushed the mirror aside and pulled Sirius in behind her, lighting blue-bottle flames for each of them.

“What is it?” she asked, pulling him to the ground beside her. “Something happened that you didn’t mention before, what is it?”

“Don’t think Dumbledore will be thrilled to find the Head Girl ran off from the scene of the crime for someone like me,” his tone was angry – aggressive, almost.

“Remus and James can handle it well enough,” she responded, doing her best to keep from rising to his bait even though his comment had irked her. “What’s got your knickers in a twist?”

“Eloquent, Evans,” he said, but she felt him slump beside her.

“I know you’re not angry at me,” she said in response. “So what is it, then?”

He sighed. “Do you think…do you think we may be doing more harm than good?”

“What do you mean?” Lily asked. She turned to face him, crossing her legs underneath herself. He gave her a wavering smile as she did so, before turning to study his blue bottle flame. He had let his hair grow out over the summer, it grazed his shoulders and shrouded his face in black waves so she couldn’t see his expression.

“Reg, he-” Sirius sniffed, almost as if he was crying. Lily put a tentative hand against his shoulder, surprised when he didn’t immediately push it away. “He said that it was our fault. That Snape and his gang were targeting muggleborns because of our stupid paper.”

“They would have anyways,” Lily said with a sigh. She was shocked that they had figured out so quickly that the Marauders were part of Operation Daily Prophet. None of them had hidden their involvement, of course, but none of them had advertised it either. Lily was fairly sure none of the teachers even knew who was behind it. But of course Snape would suspect the Marauders, he always did.

“Would they?” Sirius asked. His voice was so full of self-loathing it startled even Lily, who was quite sure she was accustomed to all the Sirius Black moods in existence.

“They would. He only said anything to make you feel…well, feel like this,” she said, more confidently than she felt. “Avery and Mulciber are gone but I bet they left Se- Snape a nice list of people to terrorize. We’re doing something good, I know we are.”

They sat for a moment in silence before Sirius raised his head abruptly. His eyes were red, as if he had been crying. “I need to ask you something,” he said. He turned to face her, causing her hand to fall from his shoulder, so they were sitting with their legs crossed and knees touching.

“What is it?” she asked, feeling oddly anxious. She had never seen Sirius, well – so _serious_ about something.

He took a deep breath that looked fortifying before he spoke. “Do you think I’d be like him. If I were in Slytherin, I mean. Do you think I’d be like Regulus?”

Whatever she had been expecting, and she wasn’t sure what she was expecting, really, it wasn’t this. She held her hands out between them – Sirius only hesitated a moment before taking them. She squeezed tightly.

“I know you wouldn’t be like Regulus,” she said confidently. She was confident, too. Whatever Sirius Black was, he wasn’t a person who went around tormenting children for the fun of it.

“You can’t know that, though,” he said, as if prepared for her answer. His hands were on hers like a vice grip. “It’s just one thing. Just a measly difference of sorting. If I were a Slytherin, if I were around them, I’d be just like him.”

“You wouldn’t – I know that for sure,” Lily responded, feeling suddenly fiercely protective. “You would not be anything like them. You know how I know?” he shook his head slightly, barely a movement, eyes focused on her.

“I know because being a Gryffindor doesn’t make you a good person. There are plenty of vile Gryffindors. You’ve made so many choices to become the person you are now and none of those have to do with your house.” She squeezed his hands back. “If you were going to be like them, you’d be running around with them regardless of your house. Alright?”

She wasn’t sure how it happened, but suddenly Sirius was crying – really crying, hand still gripping hers hard. She disentangled herself carefully, crawling forward to lay her arms around him in a sort of awkward hug. She had never seen a boy cry before (except Remus, but she hardly counted him) and wasn’t really sure what to do. But he leaned into her embrace, let her stroke his hair carefully while she tried not to break down herself simply because everything was _too much_.

It could have been minutes or hours later when the passageway door opened behind them. Sirius was leaning on her shoulder. The tears had worked themselves out, mostly, except for the occasional hiccup. He didn’t move when it opened.

“Alright?” asked a voice she recognized as Peter’s.

“Been better,” Sirius said wanly. He had an arm around Lily’s shoulders, which he squeezed before disentangling himself. “How’s the girl?”

He had clearly been crying, but the other three boys didn’t seem to mind when they stepped into view. Remus sad down beside Sirius on the passage floor almost immediately, taking his hand. “She’s alright,” he said, as Sirius absently played with his fingers. Lily was almost amused, although she couldn’t quite figure out why. “Madame Pomfrey fixed her right up. Her parents are coming to pick her up any minute now.”

“Pick her up?” Lily asked.

“She’s going home. I heard Dumbledore talking about Beauxbatons before I left. Sounds like she might go there instead,” Remus said with a sigh.

“And the group that hurt her?” Lily asked, feeling her anger build – at the world, at the situation, at a young girl being scared away from Hogwarts simply because she was born to Muggle parents.

Remus gave her a careful look from Sirius’ other side. “Two months’ detention and banned from Hogsmeade for the year.” Sirius let out a sudden, harsh exhale as if he had been hit.

“That’s it?” Lily asked. She sounded calm, but it was as if it wasn’t her. As if someone else had taken control of her body and mind and she was just watching, consumed by anger and fear and dread.

“You know Dumbledore,” James said with a harsh sigh. “Believes in second chances.”

Sirius scoffed thickly. “And third, and fourth, and fifth..”

“It’s shite,” Peter said. “He’s never been harsh enough, especially not on Snivellus. They should have been expelled!”

“Suspended at least,” said James. He sounded tired – more tired than Lily had ever heard him. She wanted to reach out to him, to say something, but it felt as if she were far away from everyone – down a long tunnel from the rest of the world.

“He’s barmy,” Pete said firmly. “Too old for the job, I reckon. McGonagall would have dealt with it properly.”

She saw, still from a distance, James give Peter a wan smile. “Maybe,” he said. “I think Dumbledore is doing the best he can. Imagine the uproar if he expelled a bunch of Slytherin’s all together.”

“Yeah?” Pete asked. He sounded angry, more angry that Lily had ever heard him, even. “Well there won’t be any uproar for any of the muggleborn or half-blood kids who are hurt while those bastards run around the school.”

James opened his mouth as if he were about to speak, then closed it again, nodding at Peter instead. “You’re right, Pete. I didn’t think. I’ll speak with Dumbledore tomorrow. Maybe dad, too, since he’s on the Hogwarts Board of Governors. Someone should be looking out for the muggleborns.”

“I think it’s time we go somewhere more cheerful,” Remus said. “Dorms, anyone?”

Peter nodded eagerly, and Sirius smiled at Remus before whispering something in his ear. They stood, but Lily couldn’t seem to get up along with them. She still felt far away.

“You lads go,” she heard James say. “I’ll catch up with you.”

Suddenly his hands were in front of her, pulling her to her feet and to his side as they watched the other three walk through the passage door. Sirius’ hand was still in Remus’s, both leaned in together. Pete was on Remus’ side – he gave a quick glance back with a small smile for James.

“We’re letting them come to terms with it,” James said, squeezing her around her shoulders.

“Remus and Sirius,” he said carefully. “They fancy each other, it’s pretty obvious.”

It was like her mind came back to her body all at once. Lily was slammed with all the emotion she had been keeping at back. Through the waves of sadness and pain, all she could say was. “Uh, they _what_?”

It was the wrong thing. James turned to her, looking cautious and almost angry. “Look, you don’t have a problem with it do you? Because if you do-”

“No!” she exclaimed hurriedly. She could feel her face burning. “I don’t care – I mean, I _do_ , but not like that. I just…” She trailed off, feeling everything building in her chest become more than she could handle. To her mortification, she burst into tears.

She felt James gather her up in his arms. “ _Shit_ Lils, I’m really sorry,” he said as she cried into her chest. “I thought you were staring at them because- of course you wouldn’t care, of course this was terrible timing. I’m an idiot.”

Despite herself, Lily felt giggles build in her chest. Soon, she was laughing and crying all at once, although even to her ears it sounded hysterical. James didn’t comment on it, he just held her until she calmed.

“It’s just too much,” she said finally.

“Of course it is,” James said into her ear. “Everything you’ve been through, it would be too much for anyone.”

She couldn’t say anything, just nodded numbly into his chest.

“Thank you for taking care of him,” he said, after a moment. “Sirius, I mean.”

“Of course,” she said. She understood, sort of, what he meant. It often seemed like he and Sirius were brothers, but somehow more. Maybe that was just what it was like when your best friend was also your brother, though – Lily certainly had no idea.

“I was thinking we could maybe go to the kitchens,” James said, then. “I bet they have ice cream. Or hot chocolate. And we haven’t eaten, so maybe we can just have ice cream and hot chocolate for dinner. I’m sure the elves wouldn’t mind.”

In spite of herself, Lily giggled again – properly this time. She separated herself from James slightly so she could look up at him. His hair was everywhere, skin dark in the dim lighting, but his eyes were brighter than ever in comparison.

“I’m sorry,” she said suddenly, becoming aware of her warm, tear-streaked face and her puffy eyes. “I must look frightful.”

James’ hand ghosted her cheek. “You look beautiful.”

Lily could feel her heart beating hard in her chest, felt as if she were running a marathon. “I bet you say that to all the girls,” she forced herself to say.

James let out an amused huff that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Only to Sirius – and don’t tell him I think you’re beautiful. He gets jealous.”

Lily smacked his arm lightly but before she could say anything else James had leaned into her, crowding her against the wall behind her. Her eyes shut automatically as his lips grazed hers. He pulled back too quickly. She could hear his heart racing as fast as hers. Feeling bold for a moment, she reached up and grabbed his shirt, keeping him from moving back.

“Oh?” James asked, sounding dazed. She didn’t wait for him to say anything else, instead pulling him back down towards her again.

This time, when his lips met hers, he didn’t pull away. Instead, he pushed closer. Lily felt him move his hands, one in her hair, the other lightly on her hip. She slowly let her grip of his shirt go to lay her hands flat on his chest.

His lips became more forceful on hers – she let hers open under the pressure, grazed his lower lip with her tongue. He leaned in close to her, his chest pressing up against hers and she had almost stopped thinking – when her stomach grumbling caused James to pull away abruptly.

“Okay,” he said breathlessly. “Wow.”

“Wow?” she asked. She definitely sounded more composed than she felt, because she didn’t feel composed at all. She was shaking, nerves on fire with _want_ and she wasn’t really sure what to do except to kiss him more, now.

“Wow,” he said again. “We need to get you some food.”

She snorted despite herself. She had to admit, she was hungry. “I’m not ready for the real world yet,” she said instead. It was true – she didn’t want to face anyone else. Not right now, when she was feeling so fragile and, apparently, had just finished snogging James Potter.

“Not the real world,” he said, “Just the kitchens.” He brushed his lips against her cheek.

“This always happens when I’m upset,” Lily said with a sigh, despite a voice in her mind telling her to just shut up and go with James.

“What does?” he asked. He took a step back so he was no longer leaning over her. She missed the warmth immediately.

“You know what I mean,” she said instead.

He sighed, ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t- are you saying you’d like me to kiss you more? Or not at all?”

He looked so confused she couldn’t help but smile. “Which do you think, you berk?” Lily asked lightly.

“I’m not sure,” James said – and was she imagining it, or did his voice sound shaky? “I’m hoping you mean you’d like me to kiss you more, because I’d like to kiss you more.”

She stepped toward him, filling the empty space, needing to be as close as she could. “Yeah,” Lily said. “That’s what I meant.”

“Well, then,” said James, his usual charming smile back. “Your wish is my command.” He winked at her, so she slapped him on the arm. Just because she wanted him to kiss her didn’t mean he _wasn’t_ infuriating.

“Food first,” she added, when he didn’t move.

“Of course,” he said. “After you.”

He gave her a mock dramatic bow, gesturing toward the exit of the passage. She laughed – for real, this time.

Maybe the world was ending, and they were all sad and everything was horrible and Lily was horribly alone and didn’t know how to go on. Maybe nothing was worth it anymore. But at least James Potter wanted to kiss her as much as she wanted to kiss him.


	7. Chapter 7 - Remus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am SO SORRY it has taken me so long to update :((( i just really got kicked in the butt with the combination of work and school and it made it really hard to find the energy to update, let alone write (and i ran through my backlog of chapters already). on the bright side, i'm in isolation for the next two weeks and working minimally from home so i'll have plenty of time to write more!! and hopefully get back to my regular update schedule. anyways, enjoy what i'm fairly sure is the longest chapter so far in this fic! plot has finally started to go down, the stakes have been raised, and the marauders are cute bros through the whole thing (TW for some minor gore)

“Conway scores again!” the announcer’s voice – a third year Hufflepuff, Remus thought – said with a remarkable lack of excitement. “Two-hundred and forty to twenty for Gryffindor.”

Lily snorted from beside him. “Poor bloke,” she said, leaning in so Remus could hear her over the roaring cheers in the Gryffindor stands. “Having to announce his team’s defeat like that.”

Remus grinned at Lily through the strands of hair blown in his face by the wind. “’Puff may as well catch the snitch now, they’ve got no chance of catching up to this lot.”

He shook his hair out of his eyes, _again_ , unable to wipe the grin from his face. The first match of the year and Gryffindor was dominating. They were a shoe-in for the Quidditch cup, plus James would be thrilled his team was performing so well. The Gryffindor stands were ablaze with excitement, synchronised gasps and cheers coming from all directions around Remus as the players wove in and out between Hufflepuff’s.

“And another goal by Potter,” he heard the announcer say, not even pretending to be excited this time. “Two-hundred and fifty to twenty for Gryffindor.”

Lily gripped his arm suddenly, making him jump. “Hufflepuff seeker,” she gasped. She was right – Hufflepuff’s seeker, a small girl who couldn’t have been older than her third year, was speeding toward the ground. Gryffindor’s seeker – a fifth year boy named John Greenthorpe – was close on her tail.

The announcer hadn’t seen yet, instead he was announcing _another_ goal by James, but the crowd was starting to catch on, shouts of excitement passing around the pitch.

“And it looks like Higsby has seen the Snitch!” there was finally excitement colouring the commentator’s voice. Remus leaned forward against the guard rail beside Peter, who was practically hanging over.

“I think it’s a feint,” Peter shouted to him over the noise of the crowd. They were nearing the ground now, the Hufflepuff and Gryffindor seekers, neither slowing down. Then – the Hufflepuff seeker pulled up suddenly as she neared the ground. She wasn’t close enough, though; the Gryffindor seeker was able to follow suit and rise back in the air.

“Right on,” Remus said to Peter, just before the Hufflepuff stands exploded in cheers. Sure enough, the Hufflepuff seeker had her fist closed around something that was small and glinting in the sun.

“Or not,” Peter said, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. Remus snorted and knocked Pete’s arm with his.

“Good thing you didn’t put any money on it, eh?”

“Should have put something on the match, honestly,” Peter said with a sigh. “Imagine – Gryffindor wins but Hufflepuff catches the Snitch. The winnings would have been absurd.”

“No kidding,” Remus said in response. He had never been one for betting on matches, but many of the Gryffindors did for fun, exchanging winnings after games. Peter participated fairly often, but after too many losses the previous year had sworn he wouldn’t this year.

“And the final score is two-hundred and fifty to one-hundred and seventy for Gryffindor,” came the announcers voice over the roar of the crowd.

The boys straightened up from the rail of the stands, following Lily and Mary, who were walking hand-in-hand, down the endless, rickety stairs of the stands. They stuck together as they exited, forcing their way against the tide of students heading back to the castle.

“Hogsmeade, d’you reckon?” Peter asked as they walked. Remus nodded, patting his pocket where he kept the Marauder’s Map. It was tradition for the Marauders to go to Hogsmeade after Gryffindor won a match. Also after they lost. And after practices. And sometimes when they had free time. They really just spent an awful lot of time at Hogsmeade – Remus tried not to think about how many rules it broke for them to visit all the time.

By the time they reached the field, James, Sirius and Marlene were already showered and waiting for them. “Alright?” Peter asked when they approached while Remus tried to ignore the way his chest turned seeing Sirius’ long hair loose and dripping.

“You lot will be off to get into some mischief, no doubt,” Lily said. It was directed at James, but Remus couldn’t help but grin ruefully.

“Guilty conscience?” Sirius’ voice came from beside him suddenly and Remus had to resist the urge to jump away – or lean closer.

“Nah,” Remus said easily. “Just contemplating how badly I want a butterbeer.”

After a moment they were separating from the girls, who were headed instead to the party in the Gryffindor common room. James and Sirius had promised them that the Marauders would just head out to get drinks and sweets for everyone before coming immediately back to the party. Normally they’d disappear for hours, even after a promise such as that, but Remus couldn’t help but feel that with the way James was so head-over-heels for Lily, they’d be back to the Common Room faster than they ever had before.

Remus pulled the map from his pocket as soon as the girls disappeared around the corner. It wasn’t as though they needed to hide the map, really – the three girls and Alice all knew about it now – but in a way it felt better to use it only between the four of them as often as possible.

“All clear,” Remus said after a quick glance. They only needed to get to the statue of the one-eyed witch, just a short walk from where they were. Peeves was nowhere nearby and Filch appeared to be in his office in the dungeons.

The boys made their way through the second floor, not really bothering to avoid students. There weren’t many about, anyways – most probably in the library catching up on homework after the quidditch match or celebrating along with the Gryffindors in the common room.

“-was _fantastic_ ,” Remus heard Pete say.

“I was too distracted,” Sirius said, shaking his head. “Should have hit her while I had the chance.”

They must have been talking about the Hufflepuff seeker. “She was too fast,” Remus interjected, causing the other three to look sharply over at him. “And Greenthorpe was too close on her tail for you to get a proper shot in without risking hitting him.”

Sirius shrugged beside Remus, shaking his hair out of his face. “Probably true, Moony,” he said with a grin that nearly disarmed Remus.

“If the rest of their team could actually score some goals they’d be competitive,” Peter interjected.

“They might, yet,” James said. They had neared the statue of the witch – James paused what he was saying as he took his wand out and looked around discreetly. “ _Dissendium_ ,” he whispered, even though there was no one around in the corridor to hear him.

The boys filtered through into the passageway one-by-one, Remus bringing up the rear, careful to make sure the witch swung closed behind them.

“Their captain is new, fifth year,” James continued as though he had never paused. “There’s still time to whip a team like that into shape. It’s not as though they were untalented, just didn’t work together well.”

Peter hummed in agreement. The passage was narrow, since third year they had to walk two-by-two to fit inside it. James and Peter were walking together, ahead of Remus and Sirius. Remus tried to ignore the way his stomach jittered every time Sirius’ arm brushed his own.

“So I was thinking, we’ll need to go to Honeydukes and Three Broomsticks of course,” James said into the silence. “And then just head back?”

“But-” Sirius mocked gasped, hand on his chest, “-but what about Gambol and Japes?”

James turned around so he was walking backwards and flicked Sirius in the forehead, much to everyone’s amusement. “We can go a different day – tomorrow if you’d like,” he added at Sirius’ pout. Remus felt it was a poor time to mention that the next day was the full moon – his friends would remember soon enough.

“Yeah, Pads,” Pete added, to Remus’ amusement but not surprise. As much as James clearly wanted to get back to Lily, Pete wanted to get back to Mary just as badly.

“But we _need_ things,” Sirius moaned. “For the Halloween prank!”

“We haven’t even decided what we’re doing,” Remus said in amusement. “I’m sure you can survive one trip to Hogsmeade without visiting the joke shop.”

“Well we _should_ have a plan already,” Sirius said mutinously. “I can’t believe your siding with them, Moony! They’re the ones who went out and got _girlfriends_ and left us all alone.”

“Oh, you poor soul,” Remus said drily, trying to ignore the flutter in his heart. “Stuck with me for company. Whatever will you do?”

“Maybe he’ll finally learn to read,” Peter snickered, to the amusement of the other boys and simultaneous chagrin of Sirius.

The passage soon let out into the cellar of Honeydukes, where the boys clambered through the trap door and trooped up the stairs, appearing behind the counter of an empty shop.

“Who’s there?” came the gravelly voice of Artie, the shop keep.

“Just us!” James called back. They let themselves out through the swinging counter door and around to look at the selection of chocolates and candy.

“Nearly gave me a heart attack,” said the jovial old man, coming around the counter and tipping his conductor’s hat in their direction. Artie was by far the Marauder’s favourite person in Hogsmeade. The man always had a smile for them on his rosy face, and extra chocolate for Remus nearly whenever they visited.

He had caught the Marauder’s sneaking in early on in their first year – only their second venture to Hogsmeade. They had forgotten James’ cloak but had decided to try to sneak in anyways. Artie had been in the store room as soon as they had come out of the trapdoor, but instead of being angry had made them swear that if they were to sneak into Hogsmeade they would only use his passage and inform him of their comings and goings, so at least someone knew where they were. The boys had agreed readily, of course. It was essentially a free ticket to roam Hogsmeade whenever they felt like it!

“Sorry,” the four boys chorused. None of them looked particularly guilty, Remus thought. Peter looked downright cheeky.

“I’ve had the shop closed all afternoon fer inventory since it’s not a Hogwarts weekend,” the man said. “Right surprised me, hearin’ noise in here all a sudden. Shoulda known it’d be you four.”

“Just won the first Quidditch match of the year,” said James, to Remus’ amusement. “Figured we’d have to go celebrate.”

“Well you boys take what you like an’ we’ll settle up before you go back to the castle,” Artie said with a warm grin before disappearing back around the corner, where Remus knew his small office lay. He always undercharged the Marauders for the sweets they chose despite their best protests, but Remus knew that sometimes James left Galleons in the bins of candy for him to find.

“We should pick out sweets last,” Remus said, seeing Peter already headed towards the cockroach clusters. For some entirely inexplicable reason they were one of Peter’s favourite treats. “Get the butterbeer’s first.”

“Alright,” Peter said glumly, “but we’re not sitting down at the pub. We’ll just grab some stuff and go.”

Sirius huffed quietly – Remus’ ears barely picked it up and he doubted the others had heard anything. He dropped back to walk beside Sirius as they left the shop.

“Alright, Pads?” he asked quietly.

Sirius ran his hand through his hair in a very James-like manner. “Yeah,” he said finally. He gave Remus a small smile.

Remus just raised an eyebrow at him.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Sirius muttered. Was it Remus’ imagination, or was the other boy blushing just a little bit?

“Like what?” Remus asked instead.

“Look,” Sirius said finally, dropping his voice even lower. They both knew Remus could hear him, no matter how quiet his voice was. “Sometimes it feels like things are changing too quickly, you know? There will always be girls and parties, but there won’t always be passageways to Hogsmeade and forbidden butterbeers at Madame Rosmerta’s. In a year we won’t even be at Hogwarts, and it’s not as though the world is a friendly place right now.”

Remus sighed. “Yeah.” He looked up, at James and Peter just ahead of them. James had clearly said something that had just caused Peter to give him a good hard push and James almost toppled into some mud by the side of the road. Remus couldn’t help but smile.

“Just because things change doesn’t mean they won’t still be the same in some ways, though. You’ll always have us, at any rate.” Remus chanced a glance up at Sirius. The other boy was looking down at him, eyes wide as if he was seeing Remus for the first time. Remus tried not to think anything of it.

Suddenly, Sirius threw an arm around Remus’ shoulders. “What would I do without you, Moony?” he asked, before dragging Remus along until they caught up with James and Peter, forcing themselves between the other two boys. Sirius threw his free arm around James and Remus, taking the hint, put his other arm around Peter.

“What’s this about?” Peter asked, amusement and delight touching his face.

“Pads is having a moment,” Remus muttered, shaking his head slightly. “Just let it happen.”

The four boys stumbled arm-in-arm towards Madame Rosmerta’s – at least until a sound stopped Remus dead in his tracks. Peter stopped along with him but James and Sirius, with their longer strides, got half a pace ahead before realizing the other boys weren’t walking with them anymore.

“What is it?” James asked, far too noisily for Remus’s liking.

“Shhh,” he hushed, waving an arm at his friends. The sound was coming from an inn on the right of the road, something that sounded like a cry and – human growling? “D’you have your cloak?” Remus asked James. He nodded in response.

“You and Pete take the cloak, I need Pads.” The instructions didn’t need to be more coherent, not with his friends. In a moment James was bending over to pick up Peter, now a rat, off the ground before disappearing behind the cloak. Instead of Sirius behind Remus, his animagus form – a great, black dog – was brushing up against Remus’ leg.

Remus couldn’t see James and Peter, but could tell where they were from the noise James made as he moved. “You two, wait by the entrance to the inn, there,” he whispered, gesturing to the rickety blue building. He heard Peter squeak, in what he assumed was annoyance. “James walks too noisily,” he said. “Just wait there, please.”

After waiting to make sure they did as they were told, he wrapped his hand in Padfoot’s fur and began to move forward steadily. Pads was the quietest walker of them all when he wanted to be – at least while he was in animagus form, and Remus was next thanks to his werewolf abilities.

“I think I know what it is,” he muttered to Padfoot as they crept closer. “Try to keep your cool. I don’t want them to know we’re here.”

Padfoot gave a huff of confusion, but Remus ignored him. They crept up to the building slowly, following the side towards the back. The blue colour of the walls faded slowly, turning more into a grisly grey as they neared the back. There were windows above them, too, but there was nothing they could do about that except pray they stayed out of sight.

He could hear the voices before they got close enough to see anything. Four distinct voices around a fire, but no more of the wailing he had heard before.

“Let ‘im sleep,” one voice growled. “He’ll be healed by the morning.”

“Weak,” spat a second voice.

“You slept for two days after you were first turned,” growled a third.

 _Turned_. Remus felt sick to his stomach. He dug his fingers more harshly into Padfoot’s scruff as he felt his hackles raise. There was a fence around the back perimeter of the building – tall and doubled up on wood slats so they couldn’t see through. Hopefully it also meant that the occupants of the yard couldn’t see them either.

He felt in his pocket, slowly and carefully, trying to find the item he knew he had on him. He drew it out – a small cube, smaller than the palm of his hand, and gently put it against the fence. Immediately, the cube expanded, creating a transparent square on the fence that they could see through but the people on the other side could not. The cube had been a gift to him from Sirius for his birthday in fifth year. The other boy had never said where he had gotten it and Remus had never pressed – he had always had the feeling that the item wasn’t…distinctly legal.

Remus had to swallow a gasp when he took a look through the makeshift window. He cast a glance down at Padfoot who had put his head against the ground and covered his eyes with a black paw.

There were four men on the other side, sitting around a fire and roasting what looked like freshly caught meat on sticks. In a heap on the ground next to them was a boy – he couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old. The boy was fast asleep, a gaping wound on his side. Remus could see it knitting itself together as he watched – werewolves healed fast, after all – but couldn’t shake the feeling that this boy was a _new_ werewolf. It made no sense – the full moon wasn’t until the next night, but no one could have inflicted a wound like that on him unless they were a were.

“Will we be ready this moon?” asked a grizzly man as he popped a piece of meat into his mouth. His eyes looked feral, almost, and even from their far distance Remus could smell his sour breath.

“Next,” said another man. He looked less dishevelled, his beard trimmed and hair pulled neatly from his face in a ponytail. “Wards are too high right now, I can’t crack ‘em.”

The first man growled. “You said they’d be ready by now.”

“I said I _hoped_ they’d be ready,” the second man said again. His eyes glinted in the light of the afternoon – they looked almost yellow. “Give ‘em some time to ease into term and Dumbledore won’t be paying so much attention to them. We can break in then.”

Remus felt suddenly sick to his stomach. Padfoot pressing against his leg, now peering up at the scene in front of them, was the only thing keeping him grounded. If he had doubted it before, he was sure now. They were werewolves – werewolves who wanted to invade Hogwarts. But why?

The third man spat in the direction of the second, the fourth man snickering as it happened. “Mr High and Mighty sure talks a lot about wards,” the fourth man spat out. “Why should we trust a word of what he says? ‘N why bother with this place anyways, when we can find people all over this village that are ripe for the picking.” He leered at the boy, still asleep on the ground.

“I talk about wards because I have the education to understand them,” the second man said stiffly.

“Shut yer yappers,” the first man said suddenly. “It has to be the school,” he continued, training his gaze on the other two men. “We need to send a message.” A terrifying looking grin grew on his face. “Not that we can’t have our fun here, too.”

Before he could watch anymore, Remus grabbed the square off the fence, effectively closing the window. Quietly, except for the hammering of his heart and the huffs of noise Padfoot made, they picked their way back along the building to their friends at the front. Remus made a “follow me” gesture and retraced their steps back to Honeydukes, signalling to his friends that they could show themselves once they were in view of the shop.

Sirius exchanged a pale-faced look with him.

“You both look like you’ve seen ghosts,” Peter said, looking towards them in confusion.

“Worse,” Sirius said. His voice was barely above a whisper – he made Remus feel guilty for having dragged Padfoot with him to witness the horrible sight.

“I think we need to tell Dumbledore,” Remus said. Sirius nodded beside him.

“Tell Dumbledore _what_?” James asked. Remus spared a moment to feel bad that James and Peter clearly felt excluded and upset that he and Sirius weren’t telling them anything before brushing it off. They’d understand soon.

The trip back to the castle was tense. Remus felt like he wasn’t himself, wasn’t in his own body. He and Sirius led the way, this time, through the passage, hardly noticing how they were tightly gripping each other’s hands. James and Peter trailed behind them, talking in low voices. Remus wasn’t even sure how they had gotten into the passage, quite sure James had said something to Artie – perhaps about them being late to return for the party – but he wasn’t sure.

He felt someone pull hard on the back of his shirt when they reached the end of the passage.

“Check the map,” James whispered. “Honestly Moony.”

“Right,” Remus heard himself say as if from a distance. He pulled the map out of his pocket and handed it to James, not trusting himself to be able to read it properly right now.

“Let’s go,” James whispered from behind him. “Dumbledore is in his office, I know the password.”

Remus was still attached by one hand to Sirius, who was more or less dragging him along at this point. And Remus let himself be dragged, too numb and in shock to do anything else.

James whispered a password when they arrived at Dumbledore’s office. The gargoyle spun to reveal stairs. It was a trip Remus had taken many times over the years, both for good things – like learning how to enter the Shrieking Shack, and for not-so-good things, like any number of the detentions the Marauders had gotten over the years.

“Come in,” came Dumbledore’s voice from behind the doors before they even had the chance to knock. Sirius raised an amused eyebrow at Remus, who tried his best to give Sirius a half-smile back.

“You’re alright, Moony,” Sirius said gently as James swung open the large door to Dumbledore’s office. “Everything’s okay, Dumbledore will put a stop to it before anyone else gets hurt.”

Sirius squeezed Remus’ hand and Remus squeezed back before they let go and stepped into the office. Sirius was right, though. Whatever it was, Dumbledore would put a stop to it – would make sure no one else, especially not any Hogwarts students – got harmed.

“What brings you four here?” Dumbledore asked. Amusement tinged his voice. “Usually Mr Filch accompanies you, or has he begun trusting you to carry out your own punishment?”

James and Peter snorted at that. Remus didn’t have the energy and suspected Sirius didn’t, either. They had seen the same things, after all.

“No, Professor,” James said. “We were – erm-” James ruffled a hand through his hair, as if to steel himself. “You see, we were in Hogsmeade this afternoon. Which – we know is wrong and we’ll accept any punishment for it but – something happened, Professor. Something bad.”

“And what was that?” Dumbledore asked. Remus kept his gaze trained on the floor. Something about the older wizard made him feel as though Dumbledore could look at his soul through his eyes, and he didn’t want the Headmaster seeing all the ugly things that hid there.

“Rem?” Peter asked, after a moment of silence. He looked up, then – realized they were all staring at him expectantly.

“Right,” he said. “Erm-” he launched into a brief explanation of what they had seen, excluding their animagus forms and the invisibility cloak. The were’s, the young boy who had seemed to be newly turned despite the lack of a full moon, the plans to invade Hogwarts. “I think,” he said once he had finished explaining. “I think they want an army of sorts. Part wizards part werewolves. I think they…I think they want a child army.”

Peter’s arm came to rest across his shoulders, pulling Remus in tightly. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw James grip Sirius, who looked visibly upset, in the same manner.

“Remus, Sirius,” Dumbledore said, his voice grave, “I want you to think very carefully before you answer me now. You are _sure_ they said they are not planning to enter castle grounds tomorrow night?”

“I’m sure,” Sirius said weakly before Remus could answer. “They said they couldn’t get through the wards, but they were expecting them to be easier to get through next month.”

Dumbledore nodded slowly. “Wards are often easier to break in the weeks surrounding Halloween, when there is much old, powerful magic in the air. Rest assured, I will make sure that doesn’t happen. Thank you for telling me, boys.”

There was a moment of tense silence. It was as though Dumbledore was dismissing them – but that couldn’t be all he had to say, Remus thought. There was still the issue of the wolves roaming freely in Hogsmeade. The chance that they could get into Hogwarts, no matter how confident Dumbledore was in his wards.

“But…what are you going to do?” Peter asked, breaking the silence. “They’re hurting children in Hogsmeade. And it sounds like they’re planning on doing it again!”

Peter’s face was flushed in anger, the hand that wasn’t around Remus clenched at his fist. Remus felt a rush of warmth for his friend – always the one to speak up when things were unfair, when people were being hurt.

“There’s not much I can do,” Dumbledore said with a sigh. “My energy and loyalty must lie in protecting this school, and I cannot do that if I am also hunting for some wayward werewolves in Hogsmeade.”

“But-” James protested. Remus chanced a glance at his other two friends. James looked upset. Sirius looked mutinous, staring down at the ground as if his eyes could burn holes in it. Knowing Padfoot, it was a look he clearly would have liked to turn on Dumbledore. James took a calming breath, “Sir, you can’t just leave them there to hurt children. Surely there’s someone who can help – someone at the Ministry you can write to, perhaps.”

“No!” Remus exclaimed, shock pulling the words out of his mouth before he could think better of himself.

“Rem,” Sirius started, but Remus cut him off, feeling Dumbledore’s eyes on him.

“No, Pads, you don’t understand.” Sirius looked affronted. Remus felt immediately guilty. “It’s not…not that simple. The Ministry doesn’t just lock them up in Azkaban like any other criminal – not werewolves. Pads, they-” he choked, in spite of himself.

“Whatever it is it can’t be worse than turning an innocent kid,” Sirius spat out.

Remus sighed in annoyance, wishing for once his words would _work_ , that he could explain what he was feeling properly. James’ eyes, at least, were gentle on him, and Peter’s arm squeezed his shoulders.

“It’s worse,” he said finally. “If the Ministry just killed them – _put them down_ , that would be one thing,” he tried to keep the self-loathing out of his voice. “But the punishment for turning someone – that’s imprisonment. That’s torture, Pads. They keep them locked in silver chains. Always. It burns. Use silver sprays and mists to keep them in line. And you know silver wounds – they don’t heal, not properly. It’s torture.” Remus was battling tears behind his eyes, trying not to let them spill over.

“But maybe they deserve it, if they’re _turning kids_ ,” Sirius said vehemently.

“Sirius,” Peter tried to cut in, but Remus shut him up with a look. Dumbledore was still watching in silence, elbows on his desk, fingers pressed together at their tips. He gazed over them from behind his half-moon spectacles. Remus had never hated him more than that moment – had never hated him, until that moment.

“Pads, listen to what you’re saying,” Remus said. He didn’t care that he sounded pleading. “Becoming a werewolf is horrid, yeah. It’s shite. But it’s still a _life_ , Pads. You taught me that. It’s not the end of that boy’s world, or anyone else’s world. They act like this, they form gangs and turn people because of _how they’re treated_. Because they’re threatened with torture and death. We can’t do that, we can’t be the people to do that. There needs to be a better way.” He breathed in a harsh gasp and, before he could change his mind, turned towards Dumbledore.

“And forgive me, Professor, but I think you can come up with a better way.” James let out a small, almost surprised sigh, as if he had never spoken to a professor with cheek before in his life. And maybe he hadn’t, not exactly like this, not with the sheer anger Remus possessed now.

Remus turned his eyes from his friends – James who was staring at him, Sirius who was still staring at the floor – to Dumbledore, who had leaned back in his chair to regard them all. This time, when he looked at Remus, Remus didn’t look away.

“I can think of one other way,” Dumbledore said, finally. “But I will only present this to you once. You are free to agree or to walk out of this room and we will pretend that this conversation never happened. But please listen to _everything_ I have to say first.”

One-by-one, each of the boys nodded, Sirius last of all. With a wave of his wand, Dumbledore summoned four chairs to where the boys were standing and gestured to them to sit. Remus sat reluctantly. He often felt more comfortable standing – maybe it was his fight or flight instincts. It was easier to run when you were already on your feet.

“I know you four are aware of the unrest building outside of Hogwarts,” he began. “Indeed, your publication – _The Hogwarts Prophet_ , was it? Most ingenious.” Remus couldn’t help but blush. No one knew it was them, but trust Dumbledore to have figured it out so quickly.

“It’s not just ours,” Sirius said mulishly. Remus was fairly sure James elbowed him, because he shut his mouth quickly. Dumbledore merely nodded in acknowledgement before continuing what he was saying.

“The man behind the madness, or much of the madness, at any rate, is someone who has become known as Lord Voldemort. He operates with a small group of followers, he thrives off of sowing fear and mistrust in the Wizarding community, and then striking at its heart.” Dumbledore sighed, looking much older, suddenly.

“Recently, I have heard from sources that he has been recruiting magical beasts – werewolves, giants, merpeople, goblins – those that have often felt overlooked by the wizarding world.” Remus tried not to bristle at being called a magical beast. Technically that’s what he was. But he was human first and most importantly. “He bribes them with promises of a world where they can live freely and be themselves – he’s recruiting them in large numbers and succeeding.”

“What’s so bad about that?” Remus asked, before he could help himself. He knew better, of course. Knew muggles were dying, muggleborns afraid – but was it his fault that such an idea sounded so _good_?

Dumbledore simply sighed. “The beasts, to him, are only a means to an end, Mr Lupin. They only things he looks down on more than part-human magical beasts are Muggleborn witches and wizards. Once the beasts he is recruiting have served his purpose he will kill them, make no mistake.”

Remus failed to repress a shudder at the Headmaster’s words. James reached over from the chair beside him to put a comforting hand on his knee.

“So what’s the other option,” Remus asked with a sigh. “What can we do that doesn’t involve reporting them to the Ministry?”

“We convince them that there is incentive in switching sides,” Dumbledore said quietly. “Show them that they have more to fear from Voldemort than they do from us.”

The room sat in silence for a moment before Sirius snorted derisively. “Incentive in switching sides?” he asked finally. “Sure, that will go well.” He mimed bumping into someone. “Oh, hi, I couldn’t help but notice you’re a werewolf fighting for Lord Moldy. Well let me tell you, he’ll kill you. All we’ll do is deprive you of human rights! So what do you say, switch sides?”

Remus rubbed a hand across his face, feeling more than exasperated. Peter let out a little snort beside him, while James just gave Sirius a fond look.

Dumbledore even entertained them with a smile. “You are right, it would not be quite that easy. However, we have something – someone, who could be a great tool to us.”

Remus felt panic building in his stomach, timed with the sudden increase in strength of the hold James had on his knee.

“Absolutely not,” Peter was the first to speak up decisively. “No way are you sending Remus to spend time with werewolves who hurt children for fun.”

Dumbledore gave them another smile. “He would be well supervised,” the Headmaster said. “One of you could be with him at all times. Yes, Mr Potter,” he said at the surprised look James was wearing, “I know about your cloak.”

The Headmaster leaned forward again, looking at each of them in turn. “Remus would visit them on weekends – perhaps for one afternoon each Saturday or Sunday. You’ll let them know you’re a seventh year Hogwarts student, of course, coming to the harsh reality of graduating with no job prospects and instead looking for a pack to fall in with. Once you gain their trust you can begin planting the seeds of doubt about Voldemort in their minds.”

Remus nodded carefully. He didn’t like it, particularly, it felt dangerous and scary – but it would mean his lycanthropy was good for something.

“And as you’ll be on official Hogwarts business you will be payed of course, Mr Lupin,” Dumbledore finished.

“You cant _bribe_ him!” Sirius almost shouted. He had jumped up from his chair and was looking quite enraged. Remus stifled a groan.

“Sirius,” he began, but the other boy cut him off.

“No, this is stupid, Moony. This is… you are a _teenager_. No one should ask you to put yourself in life or death situations. Especially not bribe you!” He was seething, facing Remus now. It took everything that was in Remus not to cower, knowing it would hurt Sirius more than anything to seem afraid of him.

“I’m also an adult,” Remus said back, more calmly than he felt. He brushed his hair out of his eyes, almost subconsciously. Definitely a habit that he had picked up from James. “This should be my decision to make, Pads. Not yours.”

“Mr Black,” Dumbledore finally said as the boys regarded each other in silence. “I assure you that this is not bribery. If Remus is doing a job, especially dangerous work, he should be fairly compensated for it.”

“Ten galleons for every time he meets with them,” Sirius shot back at Dumbledore. “Twenty if he stays longer than usual, or over a night.”

“Sirius,” Remus gasped, but he was silenced by a squeeze of James’ hand and a searching look from Peter.

“That can be arranged,” Dumbledore said calmly. Sirius seemed to deflate, to sink back in his chair as if all the life had gone out of him. James removed his hand from Remus’ knee to lean to his other side and grab Sirius’ hand.

Remus took a moment in the silence to ponder. There was no doubt that it was terrifying. Remus had never really…interacted with other werewolves before. Had hardly even seen another one except for the wolf who bit him – Greyback – and he hardly remembered that. But it would be like a job. He’d get paid, and a lot of money, too. He’d be able to afford his own things after graduating, find somewhere to live that wasn’t with his parents, even.

“Will I be able to stop?” he asked into the silence, finally. He could feel Sirius’s eyes on his, hard and piercing. “If I feel unsafe or like I can’t handle it anymore?”

“Of course,” Dumbledore said. There was a twinkle behind his eyes, now. Was it amusement? Remus wasn’t sure.

“Then I’ll do it,” he said to Dumbledore, relieved his voice wasn’t shaking. “I can do it.”

“Excellent, Mr Lupin. I think you have made a wonderful decision. I will send for you to meet with me after the full moon and we will work on finalizing our plans. In the meantime, have an excellent night. I hope all goes well tomorrow.”

With the clear dismissal, the boys filed out of the office and down the stairs.

“I know you’re all upset with me,” Remus finally said when he couldn’t take the silence anymore.

“We aren’t,” James said. Remus raised an eyebrow at him.

“Honest,” Peter said, eagerly. “We can all go with you – Sirius as Padfoot and me as Wormtail and James under the cloak. And you know, you’ll earn some pocket money. And soon we’ll all be out of Hogwarts anyways, so it won’t matter. Or we can fight for real, if this Voldemort man is still around.”

Remus smiled wanly at Peter. “Thanks Pete,” he said. “And James.” He did his best not to turn his head, but as they rounded a corner in the corridor he couldn’t help but look at Sirius. They locked eyes, for a moment. Tension was still painted in the lines of Sirius’ face.

“We’ll go ahead,” James said, as if feeling the tension. “C’mon, Pete.”

Sirius pulled him into an adjacent classroom as soon as the other two had left, perching himself on a desk with a surly look on his face. Remus hesitated for a moment before joining him, forcing his way onto the desk so they were sitting back to back, leaning against each other.

“I’m not going to say sorry-” Remus said into the silence, just as Padfoot began speaking.

“I’m not mad at you-” Both boys paused for a moment before Remus snorted.

“You go first,” he said to Sirius.

“I’m not angry with you,” Sirius said again. “I just… think you feel like this is something you have to do. I think that’s how Dumbledore made it sound. But it’s not something you have to do, you know that, yeah?”

“I guess,” Remus said with a sigh. “But if I don’t do anything they’ll keep hurting people. Or they’ll get reported to the Ministry. And I can’t – I can’t let that happen.”

“Remus,” Sirius sighed softly. Remus hated the way the other boy’s concern made him feel. “You wouldn’t be letting anything happen. Dumbledore would be letting it happen. Not you.”

“Yeah,” Remus said, with no real conviction. “I got lucky, though,” he said. “I was already a wizard. I was young. I got to go to Hogwarts. Most…most werewolves don’t get that. So if I can help them…”

“Then it’s like you’re repaying them for getting more opportunities?” Sirius asked. Remus hated how he always knew him, how Sirius sometimes even knew him better than himself.

Remus didn’t respond, just let the silence wash over them, leaning back against Sirius. The other boy’s hand grazed his and they laced hands carefully. Remus almost wished they’d stop doing this – or maybe that doing this would start to mean something – anything other than the strange limbo he had been in with Sirius all summer.

“I’m scared,” Sirius said suddenly into the silence. “I’m scared that something big is coming, that we’ll be in the middle of it. I’m scared that I’ll have family on the other side of it all. I’m scared that I’ll lose you – any of you. I don’t know what I’d do without you three, Rem.”

Remus squeezed his hand gently. “We’ll be alright, Pads. We always are.”

Sirius hummed on his other side as if contented, but Remus couldn’t help but feel like his words were entirely empty. It was as though his world was coming together and falling apart all at once, and he was entirely unprepared for either option.


End file.
